Washington: United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on December 12 dismissed Iraq's denials and insisted that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction regardless of what it says in its 12,000-page report to the United Nations.

Rumsfeld made the statement in an interview to CNN from Qatar, which will be the forward headquarters from which an invasion on Iraq will be mounted if the US decides to go to war against Baghdad and where electronic exercises are being conducted on the problems US could face in such an invasion.

Rumsfeld wanted UN inspectors to contact scientists who would be familiar with Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes and who may be willing to leave the country with their families and disclose the true state of affairs.

He told a military Town Hall meeting that the terrorist threat facing the United States and the free world is a lot worse than it has ever been before.

It is a fact, he said, that "we are at a point in the history of the world where terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction have relationships with terrorist networks that are threatening to kill innocent men, women and children and who last year killed 3,000 Americans.

"The connection between these two poses a danger that is notably different in the 21st Century than it was in the 20th Century," he said.

Commander-in-chief of the US Central Command General Tommy Franks, under whose leadership the exercises are being conducted, said that they are going "exceedingly well".

Secretary of State General Colin Powell said in an interview on December 12 that Iraq would have to get a certificate not only from (a majority of) the UN Security Council, but also from the US, opening the possibility that the US will invade Iraq even if the Security Council refuses to declare war.

PTI