London: Iraq could, with foreign help, in just a matter of months make nuclear weapons to back up its deadly stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, a London-based think tank said on September 9.

In a 78-page report, based in part on input from former UN arms inspectors, the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said the world has "a pressing duty" to tackle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

"The retention of WMD capacities by Iraq is self-evidently the core objective of the regime," said IISS director John Chipman. "It has sacrificed all other domestic and foreign policy goals to this singular aim."

"Sooner or later, it seems likely that the current Iraqi regime will eventually achieve its objectives," he said.

On the basis of available data, Iraq could put together nuclear weapons "within months" if it got its hands on fissible material, enriched uranium or plutonium, from another country, the IISS report said.

In addition, Iraq probably has about a dozen al-Hussein missiles, with a range of 650 km, that could hit targets in Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, it said.

Such missiles could be fitted with chemical and biological warheads, developed from stocks dating back to before the Gulf War in 1991, it said.

Military analysts said the IISS report, four months in the making, contained no fresh details on Iraq's weapons programmes, four years after President Saddam Hussain threw out UN inspectors.

However, it lent credibility to US concerns that Baghdad is pursuing the development of weapons of mass destruction, although it stopped short of endorsing Washington's call for "regime change".