New York: The Bush administration has begun monitoring Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathisers of the Baghdad regime.

Next week, federal authorities plan to begin interviewing Arab-Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to Iraq, a senior government official said. The interviews will be voluntary, but in the past, such efforts have been criticised by Arab-American groups.

The previously undisclosed intelligence programme, a media report said, involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending American Universities or working at private corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United States-led war against Iraq.

Some of the targets of the operation are being electronically monitored under the authority of national security warrants. Others are being selected for recruitment as informants, the officials told 'The New York Times'.

In the event of an American invasion of Iraq, the paper said officials would intensify the programme's mission through arrests and detentions of Iraqis or Iraq sympathisers if they are believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations.

The government officials who confirmed the outlines of the programme did so in an apparent effort to rebut critics in Congress and elsewhere who have complained in recent days that American intelligence agencies are failing in their war against terror, the report said.

The Iraqi domestic intelligence programme, the 'Times' said, is an addition to the government's continuing effort since the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon to identify citizens of Middle Eastern countries who represent a potential threat. Those efforts have also been stepped up as the country prepares for the possibility of war.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is planning to meet with Arab-American civic leaders to explain the non-classified aspects of the operation, officials said.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the surveillance programme, which is classified, the paper said.

The effort by intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, to strengthen and expand their counter terrorism programmes comes at a time of serious discussion in Congress and in the Bush administration about whether to create a domestic intelligence agency like MI-5, the British agency that collects information about internal threats, the report noted.

No one in the administration has formally proposed creating a domestic intelligence agency. Several officials told 'The Times' that dismantling the FBI remained an uncertain prospect, but they said a wide range of ideas were likely to be considered with the creation of a Homeland Security Department.

PTI