LONDON: Saddam Hussein is convinced that a US attack on Iraq is inevitable, whether or not he readmits United Nations arms inspectors, Arab and Western analysts say.

The Iraqi leader knows he is in America’s gunsights and is seeking to put off the onslaught in the hope that an unforeseen event throws President George W. Bush’s plans off course.

“Saddam has concluded that an American attack is coming and that he can only delay it or try to make it harder,” London-based Iraqi analyst Mustafa Alani said.

For now, the man who has ruled Iraq with a rod of iron for more than three decades can sleep relatively soundly, perhaps lulled by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s latest assertion that no decision to go to war has yet been taken.

“It is not imminent, we are not at the point of decision yet,” Blair told reporters on Thursday.

Earlier in the week UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had ruled out more talks on arms inspectors unless Baghdad showed willingness to allow them back. Iraq said this could only happen if the United States halted its threats of “regime change”.

It also wants any agreement to include a route toward lifting sanctions, imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and an end to the US-British no-fly zones over parts of Iraq.

But Bush’s belligerent rhetoric appears to have deprived Saddam of any reason to cooperate with the United Nations and an inspections regime that he has always despised.

Saddam has begun to gear up the Iraqi population for the war he believes is coming, according to Mustafa Hamarneh, director of Jordan University’s Centre for Strategic Studies.

Toby Dodge, a researcher at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, said Saddam was likely to respond to any US military build-up with counter-measures designed to hinder an advance on Baghdad and raise the costs of any invasion.—Reuters