WASHINGTON, Aug 27: US warplanes on Tuesday attacked air defence targets in “no-fly” zones of northern and southern Iraq a day after US Vice President Dick Cheney said it was time to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The US military, citing repeated Iraqi attempts to shoot down US and British warplanes, said American jets attacked a radar site in northern Iraq and an air defense command facility in southern Iraq.

Hundreds of such tit-for-tat exchanges have occurred since the 1991 war, but they have increased sharply in recent months as speculation has grown that President George W. Bush will order the US military to invade Iraq and remove Saddam, who Washington accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.

According to the Pentagon, Tuesday’s raids against air defences in the two zones were the sixth and seventh in just over a week,. with the total number reaching 32 this year.

In a tough speech on Monday, Cheney called for a liberated Iraq, saying that now, not later, is the time for a pre-emptive strike against Saddam. He noted that many US allies, former senior US officials and even congressional leaders in his own Republican Party were cautioning against military action now.

“Some concede that Saddam is evil, power-hungry and a menace, but that until he crosses the threshold of actually possessing nuclear weapons we should rule out any pre-emptive action,” Cheney told a veterans group in Nashville, Tennessee.

“That logic seems to me to be deeply flawed. The argument comes down to this: Yes, Saddam is as dangerous as we say he is, we just need to let him get stronger before we do anything about it,” he said. “Yet if we did wait until that moment, Saddam would simply be emboldened and it would become even harder for us to gather friends and allies to oppose him.”

US military officials said Western warplanes left the areas of Tuesday’s attacks safely and that damage was being assessed.

The US European Command in Germany, responsible for military operations in northern Iraq, said jets attacked a radar site near Mosul.

The US Central Command, which heads military operations in the Gulf, said warplanes used precision-guided weapons to strike an air defence command and control facility near An Nukhayb in the southern no-fly zone.

Earlier Iraq said US and British warplanes had attacked civilian targets in the south of the country on Monday. But US and British officials said they were unaware of any attacks on Monday, although raids were conducted on targets in the southern zone on Sunday.

UN ARMS CHIEF: Iraq on Tuesday renewed a call for talks with the United Nations but branded the UN disarmament chief a “spy”, as US Vice President Dick Cheney urged swift, pre-emptive military action against Baghdad.