Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rasheed said yesterday Baghdad would cooperate fully with UN arms experts to disprove US and British accusations that it still held weapons of mass destruction.

Scores of arms inspectors visited nine suspect plants yesterday as US and British planes attacked what Washington said were anti-aircraft artillery sites in a no-fly zone in southern Iraq.

In London, opponents of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein agreed on a political blueprint for the country's future, calling for a federal and tolerant Iraq if Saddam is ousted.

But it is not clear what support the US-backed delegates have in their homeland. Saddam has dominated Iraq for 30 years and most of the delegates have been in exile for decades.

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, meanwhile, branded US President George W. Bush a warmonger and hypocrite.

He said on the US Fox News Sunday programme that Bush was "driving America to a hostile imperialist policy" that was dangerous for both the United States and the world.

In an interview with Reuters, Oil Minister Rasheed said: "The situation is unfolding. The whole public opinion will see how Iraq is wise, Iraq is truthful. It has absolutely no weapons of mass destruction."

Asked if Iraq would comply with a UN demand for a list of scientists associated with its weapons programmes, he said: "They will try many questions. We will deal with them."

Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix wrote to an Iraqi official on Thursday demanding the list - as authorised by the Security Council - by the end of the month.

Plants inspected by arms experts yesterday included missile sites, a former nuclear research centre, a chemical complex and a glass and ceramics company. They searched a dozen locations the previous day in their busiest round of inspections so far.

The inspectors returned last month after a four-year absence to check Iraq's claim that it no longer has any long-range missiles or chemical, biological or nuclear arms.

At the London conference, the final draft of a resolution hammered out by around 330 delegates representing six opposition groups recognised by the United States vowed to refuse foreign guardianship and occupation of Iraq if Saddam is toppled.

The draft, seen by Reuters but still to be formally announced, said Iraq's new government should be a federal democracy and Islam should remain the state religion.

On the sidelines of the conference, Bush's special envoy for "free Iraqis", Zalmay Khalilzad, told Reuters Television News: "We don't want war with Iraq. We want Saddam to comply with UN resolutions, and freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people."

Khalilzad was appointed Bush's "special envoy and ambassador at large for free Iraqis" earlier this month in a move seen as reinforcing Washington's policy of "regime change" in Iraq.

"We hope war will be avoided. The ball is in Mr Hussein's court," he said.

Tareq Aziz used the US Fox programme to lambast Bush: "He's a hypocrite because a true Christian would not be a warmonger, would not push for the destruction of a country and its people."

Predicting there would be "a great amount" of American casualties should the United States invade his country, Aziz also insisted Iraq had no banned weapons.

"They will not find any weapons of mass destruction because, simply, we don't have them," he said.

Answering American charges that Iraq was not telling the truth, Aziz said: "When you speak about lying, the big liars in this world are the United States of America."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri complained to the United Nations about US and British policing of a self-declared "no-fly" zone in the south of the country.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he said US and British aircraft based in Kuwait had violated Iraqi airspace 1,141 times between November 9 and December 6.

"These daily violations... facilitated by the government of Kuwait, and the barbaric bombing of Iraq's cities and villages, have reached the level of an undeclared war," Sabri wrote.

"The United Nations must take the necessary steps in line with the (UN) charter to halt the aggression."

Iraq said US and British warplanes had attacked civilian targets in the southern zone on Saturday. The US military said they had targeted Iraqi air defences after coming under fire.

Washington said US and British jets had attacked Iraqi air defence facilities in southern Iraq again yesterday.

An Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency, said the planes had struck civilian installations in the southern provinces of Dhi Qar and Wasit and that Iraqi anti-aircraft and missile batteries had fired back.

Iraq does not recognise the no-fly zones, which were set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from Saddam's forces.

Meanwhile, Russia's biggest oil firm, LUKOIL, said Moscow's support for the November 8 UN resolution sending arms experts back to Iraq had prompted Baghdad to scrap a $3.7 billion deal to develop a huge Iraqi oilfield.

However, Oil Minister Rasheed told Reuters the contract had been scrapped because LUKOIL had not honoured commitments, but that Iraq would consider awarding it to another Russian firm.

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