WASHINGTON, Jan 11: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a deployment order Friday to send an additional 35,000 US troops to the Gulf.

It is the largest deployment order since the United States began a buildup of forces last month for a possible invasion of Iraq.

The order coincided with a warning by Secretary of State Colin Powell that the United States “reserves the right, in the absence of international action to disarm Iraq, to act with like-minded nations to disarm Iraq”.

His comments followed a UN report saying that its inspectors had found “no smoking guns” in Iraq during their recent investigations. The report caused speculations in the media here that it would make it more difficult for America to get international endorsement for a military action.

Following the order, about 7,000 Marines left the port of Norfolk, Virginia, aboard three ships, USS Saipan, the USS Ponce and the USS Gunston Hall.

This brings the number of troops deployed to the Gulf region to around 80,000.

The Pentagon planned to have well over 100,000 troops in the region by the end of this month, hoping to ultimately raise the figure to 250,000.

In Washington, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), met top US officials on Friday for talks on Iraq and North Korea.

After his talks with Powell, he told reporters that the UN nuclear watchdog had “not yet come to a conclusion” whether Baghdad had nuclear weapons or not.

“We still have a lot of work to do. The more Iraq cooperates actively with us, the better we will be able to provide positive assurances to the Security Council.

“Iraq has been cooperating well in the area of process, but not as much in the area of substance. We’d like to see more evidence, more documentation ... more physical evidence of the destruction of items they said they have disposed of,” he said.

ElBaradei also said he wanted Baghdad to accede to inspectors’ requests for private interviews with its scientists. Inspectors believe some scientists might have information about weapons programmes that they would divulge only in private and only if their safety was assured.

ElBaradei said he and chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix would travel to Baghdad on Jan 19 “to impress on the Iraqis that we cannot continue to have open questions”.

Powell said ElBaradei briefed him on that trip and the need for increased cooperation from Baghdad. “Let there be no question in anyone’s mind,” Powell said. “Iraq must be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction. ... The people of the world have spoken.”

The IAEA chief met US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Republican Senator Richard Lugar, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE: The Pentagon and US intelligence agencies have begun sending e-mail to key Iraqi leaders, telling them that they cannot win the war against America. “This is just the beginning of a psychological warfare campaign” to demoralize Iraq rulers, a military official said.