Opec member Kuwait's oil minister said in an interview published yesterday that the cartel was ready to increase crude supplies to world markets if the United States decided to go ahead with a military strike on Iraq.

"If a war starts, Opec countries are ready to fill any possible supply disruption," Kuwait's acting oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, told Russia's Vremya Novostei daily.

"Kuwait's quota inside Opec is 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd), but we can export more, up to two million bpd. Many others are also able to increase production, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates," Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, in Moscow on a three-day visit, said.

He said Kuwait would not support a military strike on Iraq, but said no decision had been taken on whether or not to allow US forces to use Kuwaiti bases.

"The Americans have bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Turkey. Why does everybody pay so much attention to Kuwait? And the Americans can easily do without land bases because they have aircraft carriers," Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah, who is also Kuwait's acting information minister, said.

Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah said he did not expect Opec to raise oil output at its September meeting unless the price of its basket of crudes went above $28 per barrel. Analysts have warned that without at least another one million barrels per day of extra Opec output, prices could quickly spiral higher in the second half of the year.

Opec ministers will meet in Osaka, Japan, on September 19 to decide whether to raise output in response to the current oil price rally, sparked in recent months by concerns that a US-led military strike on Iraq could disrupt flows of crude from the Middle East, home to two thirds of world oil reserves.