The exercise, coded as Reliant Mermaid, is the fifth exercise between the United States and its two important Mideast allies since 1998.

Three Israeli navy missile boats and a naval reconnaissance helicopter, two Turkish frigates and a naval helicopter, as well as a US frigate and a naval helicopter, are participating the exercise, which would be ended in the midnight.

"The exercise, humanitarian by nature, involves no combat activity, and is not directed against anyone in the region," Ran Ben Yehuda, commander of the Israeli navy, told reporters Tuesday in Haifa Navy Base.

"The sole objective of the exercise is to practice coordinated emergency search and rescue procedures for assisting people in distress at sea," the commander stressed.

The remark was obviously an official respondence to those speculations that the exercise was designed for a possible US-led war against Saddam Hussein's regime. Reports here said the war on Iraq would be launched in the mid of February.

With the increasing possibility of the war, Israel has stepped up its preparations for a possible Iraqi retaliation for the US attacks.

The army troops of Israel and the United States will stage a joint military exercise in early January to integrate two differentanti-missile systems as part of Israel's final preparations for a possible Iraqi attack.

In a joint exercise, the binational troops will coordinate codesand communications and integrate the Patriot system with advanced Arrow anti-missile defense system.

Iraq fired at least 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, when the missiles had conventional warheads.

Security experts, however, believe that it is possible Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons to retaliate for Israel this time.

(Xinhua News Agency January 2, 2002)