"He's got to understand that his day of reckoning is coming," Bush told reporters at his Texas ranch where he is spending the New Year holidays.

"I am hopeful we won't have to go to war," he added. "Let's leave it at that until Saddam Hussein makes up his mind to disarm."

The State Department kept up the same message. Saddam must either "change his ways or change his venue," said spokesman Richard Boucher.

Boucher said he was not aware of any moves under way to negotiate exile for the Iraqi leader. "At this point, if it's an option he has, he ought to be smart enough to take it."

Saddam denies having the weapons of mass destruction which the United States and Britain, key members of the UN Security Council, claim he possesses.

The United States has about 64,000 troops in the Gulf, according to Defense Department officials, and another 25,000 troops will be added in coming weeks.

The new deployments will involve mainly the army's 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia and squadrons of air force of F-15 fighters and B-1 bombers.

But additional deployment orders are expected to go out as the United States steps up pressure on Iraq.

"Over the next several weeks you are going to see a steady force buildup," said a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Some of it will be visible. Some you'll miss."

The US Army meanwhile announced it was bringing together commanders of key combat divisions for a battle exercise in Germany this month under Lieutenant General William Wallace, who would likely lead ground forces in any war against Iraq.

Dubbed "Victory Scrimmage," the exercise will involve more than 1,000 troops at the US army's training center at Graffenwohr, said a spokesman for the Heidelberg-based V Corps.

"It is part of our ongoing effort to stay ready and ensure that if V Corps and its related units are asked to undertake an operation, we're ready to do it," said V Corps spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joe Richards.

An army official who declined to be named confirmed that key commanders of the 101st Airborne and the 1st Cavalry Divisions as well as the German-based 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions would take part in the exercise, scheduled to begin January 23.

Iraq announced, meanwhile, that chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is to visit Baghdad in the third week of this month.

"This visit is a positive step ... I think the visit could lead to an improvement in the relationship between the United Nations and Iraq," General Hossam Mohammad Amin, who heads Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, the body that liaises with the UN inspectors.

Blix was invited to Baghdad, said Amin, to discuss how to best apply UN Security Council Resolution 1441 on disarmament, as well as to cover outstanding issues from former Iraqi arms programs.

On January 27, Blix is to report to the UN Security Council on the results of inspections that resumed November 27. The report is deemed critical for world leaders gauging Saddam's commitment to disarmament.

UN experts from Blix's UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have so far visited 230 suspect sites, 37 of which were new sites that had not been previously checked by UN monitors following the 1991 Gulf War, Amin said.

Meanwhile Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz slammed Washington for moving ahead with war preparations despite the fact that UN experts had been able to visit all the sites they have wanted to inspect and "will visit whatever sites they want to visit".

"There is an imperialist design behind all the fuss that has been created by Washington, and that design is to invade Iraq, to occupy Iraq, and to use the national resources of Iraq for the purposes of the (US) military industrial complex, for the purposes of the capitalist regime," he added.

Iraq's official press called on the international community of nations to form a united front against US "imperialist" policies in the new year.

(China Daily January 3, 2002)