KUWAIT CITY: At a dinner party in an upmarket Japanese restaurant in Kuwait, talk among western expatriates centres on leaving the Gulf state, where Americans have recently become a terrorist target and Baghdad has threatened suicide attacks if war is launched.

Over sushi and tempora they discuss shipping and storage costs along with advice issued Friday by the United States Embassy urging its 8,000 citizens in Kuwait to consider departing in the light of terrorist threats. The advice never mentioned the threat of war with Iraq.

“We don’t want to go, but I have made most of the arrangements for the cargo movers to come and pack, and for our cats to be transported out. It’s a major decision,” said British national Justine Shier, a broadcast journalist for Kuwaiti television. Other embassies are planning contingencies for war.

Philippine president Gloria Arroyo will visit Kuwait Sunday to oversee the state of readiness for relocation and or evacuation of 60,000 Filipino workers. Global freight movers say they have already been busy moving expatriates’ belongings out and are booked solid over the next two weeks with more shipments.

Flights out of Kuwait are full, many with only wait-listed seats available. Members of the Kuwaiti al-Hamdan family gathered around the lunch table to discuss who will stay and who will leave in the event of a war, and how much luggage they will take. Schools have been given an extended holiday this month.

“My daughter and her husband will go out, and normally I would, but I will stay this time to look after the other women in the family, and of course my mother,” who is in her 80s said Aziz al- Hamdan, the elder patriarch of the large, extended family.

“We are in God’s hands,” he said as they discussed how scores of Kuwaitis have already departed for holiday homes in neighbouring countries, many with plans to go to Saudi Arabia to perform Haj, but to also stay outside longer if war breaks out.

Threats from Baghdad against Kuwait for hosting U.S. and British troops on its soil for imminent war, and three recent terrorist attacks against Americans in the Gulf state, prompted the government to deploy security forces on the street.

Some 4,000 National Guard in armoured vehicles, police, and other security forces patrol streets, intersections, and government facilities as part of the enhanced security initiative.

“We expect sabotage operations,” Kuwait’s interior minister Sheikh Mohammed Khaled told reporters at a security briefing where he outlined contingencies the state would be taking.

“We are at level one now, but security will be raised to the highest level of three by mid-February,” said a senior ministry of interior official. By then, some 80,000 U.S. troops with more weapons and equipment will have poured into the Gulf state to join some 20,000 soldiers already on the ground poised for war.

“There will be no need to leave, it’s safe for you here,” said the interior official referring the exodus sparked by the American Embassy notice.

But the Iraqi vice president Taha al-Yaseen on Saturday threatened to unleash suicide missions against Americans in the Middle East should Washington begin war. Suicide attacks “are our new weapon,” al-Yaseen told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine. Even those with no intention of departing are nonetheless preparing suitcases, documents, and their cars just in case they have to make a quick exit.

Iraq’s potential use of chemical or biological weapons on Kuwait scares them more than the threat of terrorism.—dpa