WASHINGTON, Dec 11: Thousands of expatriate Iraqis all over the world have expressed interest in a US programme to train them for fighting Saddam Hussein, the State Department said Tuesday.

On Monday, President George W. Bush authorized using $92 million for providing military training and other facilities to Iraqi opposition groups.

The money is given under a law passed by Congress in 1998. Under this law, Congress had authorized $97 million for this purpose. The US administration had already allocated $5 million for funding Iraqi opposition groups, of which about a million had already been spent.

In the past two years, the Department of Defense, which oversees this programme, trained 140 Iraqi opposition members under the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998. But this year the Bush administration decided to expand the programme and asked Iraqi opposition groups to send a list of their members available for training.

“We’re quite gratified with the response we had under that,” said State Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker. “Thousands of expatriate Iraqis all over the world have expressed an interest in participating,” Reeker told a briefing in Washington.

Reeker denied reports that Washington has asked the opposition Iraqi National Congress to be the sole intermediary for assistance to other groups. “Under the plan as I understand ... each group is going to coordinate with the Department of Defense through a committee made up of representatives of a number of groups,” said Reeker.

Besides INC, he said, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq are also groups designated under the Iraq Liberation Act.