BAGHDAD, Feb 27: Iraq will respond within the next two days to a United Nations order to destroy its Al Samoud missiles, to meet a deadline set by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, an Iraqi official said on Thursday.

Iraq had said previously that it was “seriously and genuinely” studying the order Mr Blix gave it last week to begin destroying, by Saturday, dozens of the missiles as well as their warheads, engines and launchers.

It is a key test of Iraq’s willingness to comply with UN disarmament demands — Blix says the missiles can fly further than the 150kms the UN allows for Iraq’s weaponry.

The Iraqi official said the reply would be in the form of a letter sent to the UN Security Council.

Western officials forecast that Iraq would meet Blix’s demand.

“I predict that Iraq will indeed begin to destroy its Al Samoud missiles beginning March 1,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in Washington.

He said he had no independent knowledge of such plans.

“But this is easily predictable. It’s part of the game-playing that Iraq has done in the past. They take off a few inches from the tip of their iceberg and leave the mass underwater where it can do the most damage,” he said.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters at a European Union function in Brussels: “Blix has set a task for Iraq, and Iraq will have to deliver on this. I assume it will deliver.”

NO WORD AT U.N: At the United Nations in New York, the UN weapons inspection agency said that it had no word yet from Baghdad.

“We have heard nothing from them so far,” a spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection agency said, responding to reports that Iraq had agreed to destroy the missiles.

General Amer al-Saadi, a senior adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, had hinted on Monday that Iraq would agree to the demand, saying Baghdad had to be pragmatic about the issue.

Destruction of the Al Samoud 2 missiles would be a blow to Iraq as it prepares for a possible invasion by US forces.—Reuters