BAGHDAD: Iraq’s military likely would respond to a US invasion by attempting to lure American forces close to Baghdad and other large population centers, where Iraqi commanders believe their soldiers would be less vulnerable to airstrikes and civilians will be more willing to fight for the government, according to senior government officials and diplomats here.

The strategy appears based on Iraq’s experience in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when it lost thousands of soldiers in its vast southern desert. During that war, US ground forces were able to easily overrun Iraqi troops, whose trenches and bunkers provided them little cover from American artillery and bombs.

Now, Iraqi officials have indicated that they would fight a very different war by shielding their soldiers in cities and trying to draw US forces into high-risk urban warfare.

“Take the desert,” Mohammed Mehdi Saleh, a senior member of President Saddam Hussein’s Cabinet, said in an interview on Thursday. “What’s in the desert? If they want to change the political system in Iraq, they have to come to Baghdad. We will be waiting for them here.”

Although there has been no visible military buildup on Baghdad’s streets in recent weeks, Western military analysts say they believe there are at least three divisions of the army’s Republican Guard, Saddam’s best-trained and most loyal troops, stationed in and around this sprawling capital of 4.8 million people. The main Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, reported that Saddam had centralized command of the Republican Guard and had ordered new fortifications built around Baghdad.

It is unclear whether the talk of urban warfare here reflects firmly held battle plans or is intended as a verbal counterpunch to threats emanating from Washington. Iraqi officials have not commented about troop deployments other than to emphasize their readiness.

A Western source with close ties to Saddam’s government said Iraqi officials repeatedly refer to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, which US and allied troops occupied in 1993 and abandoned two years later after encountering stiff local resistance.

American military analysts say, however, that they already have anticipated that a war in Iraq could be fought mainly in urban areas.

The continued enforcement by the US and Britain of “no-fly” zones over Iraq has also contributed to the government’s strategy to mobilize much of its forces around Baghdad and other cities in the central part of the country. Since shortly after the Gulf War ended, US and British pilots have targeted Iraqi anti- aircraft guns, surface-to-air missile batteries and radar installations in a broad swath of the country’s north and south.

The southern no-fly zone, which begins at the 32nd parallel, was designed to protect Shia Muslims, who rebelled after the Gulf War. The northern zone, beginning at the 36th parallel, is intended to safeguard ethnic Kurds who have carved out an autonomous enclave.

A senior Iraqi official accused the United States of increasing the frequency and intensity of its strikes in the no- fly zones as prelude to a ground invasion.

Pentagon officials have denied that they have increased the number of no-fly patrols or attacks in recent months. Since the beginning of the year, US pilots have recorded 175 incidents in which their aircraft have been fired on in the southern no-fly zone.—Dawn/The LAT-W.P News Service (c) The Washington Post.