Dubai: The regime of Saddam Hussein, which President George W Bush's administration wants toppled, is warning its neighbours that a potential US strike would destabilise the entire region.

Saddam's elder son Uday warned during a meeting this week with an Iraq-based Iranian dissident of a US plan to carve up the Islamic republic.

"After Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Iran's turn will come," Uday told the dissident, Tareq Abdul Karim Naama.

He also warned Iranian leaders against joining any hostile action against Iraq. "Not an inch of Iraqi soil will ever become part of their territory," he said without elaborating.

Iran and Iraq have not signed a formal peace treaty since their 1980 to 88 war, but Tehran, branded by Washington as forming an "axis of evil" along with Baghdad and Pyongyang, has said it is "strongly opposed" to a US military attack on its old foe.

Uday had charged in the July 7 edition of his Babel daily that the United States had "drawn up a plan aimed at striking Iraq and breaking up the countries of the region," including Saudi Arabia.

The plan envisaged making "Jordan an alternative country for the Palestinians, dividing Saudi Arabia into three parts, and scrapping Bahrain's identity and re- attaching it to Persia (Iran)," he said in the article which carried one of his pseudonyms, Abu Hatem.

US President George W Bush has renewed a pledge to use "all tools" at his disposal to oust Saddam, whom Washington accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The prospect of US military action was further heightened after July 4 to 5 talks between Baghdad and the United Nations on the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq broke down.

But the prospect of a military campaign against Iraq has garnered little support from neighbouring states and the Gulf monarchies, three of whom, Oman, Qatar and the UAE, have signed free-trade agreements with Baghdad.

Saudi Arabia, whose decades-old friendship with Washington was shaken by last September's terror attacks, in which 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were Saudi nationals, has warned against interfering in what it deems the internal affairs of Iraq.

Even Kuwait, which was invaded by Iraqi troops in August 1990 and occupied for seven months before their expulsion by a US-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, has denied having had any contact with Washington about the use of its territory.

Turkey is firmly opposed to an attack on Iraq, fearing that it could cause regional turmoil and worsen its economic woes. Turkey, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, allows US and British warplanes to use its territory to enforce no-fly zones imposed by London and Washington over Northern and Southern Iraq.

Jordan, which refused to join the Gulf War coalition, is steadfastly rejecting an attack on Iraq, its main Arab trade partner, which supplies it with most of its oil needs, half of it free and the rest at preferential rates.

The Jordanian government was quick to stress Saturday that the participation of Prince Hassan bin Talal at an Iraqi opposition meeting in London "does not reflect" its position towards Iraq.

Representatives of Iraqi opposition movements, both small and large, gathered in London on July 12 for three days of meetings on toppling Saddam Hussein's regime.

However, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, Abdul Bari Atwan, cited Nabil al-Janabi, who is "very close to the Jordanian court," as saying the reigning Hashemite royal family would play a role in re-establishing the monarchy in Baghad, toppled in 1958.

"The names of the future king and crown prince of Iraq will be announced as soon as the strikes start," said Atwan, who also talked of a three-pronged US attack on Iraq launched from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey.

"For this, the Americans have decided to use bases in eight countries, seven of which are Arab, without asking their advice," Atwan told Qatar's Al-Jazeera satellite television channel.