'We will kill the British soldiers'

Baghdad and Washington continued to trade allegations over whether Saddam Hussein poses a threat to world peace today as one of the Iraqi president's top advisers singled out British troops for particularly bloodthirsty treatment in the event of war.

The threats from Dr AK al Hashemi, head of Iraq's Organisation for Friendship, Peace and Solidarity, came as the propaganda war intensified between the Bush administration, ally Tony Blair, and Saddam's regime. In the latest allegations Saddam is said to have met with Osama bin Laden twice and to have tried to get his eldest son, Uday, killed.

Dr al Hashemi said: "Everyone in Iraq knows why the Americans want to come here. They want our oil and the Bush family has a hang up about our president. But what is in it for the British?

"It's just stupid for the British to attack Iraq and not in their wider interests. So the Iraqi people will make sure that if they shoot an American soldier three times, a Brit will get killed five times over. The British have no business coming here - but we are waiting for them if they do".

While a good deal of criticism of the Bush and Blair policy of deposing Saddam has focused on who would replace him and in what kind of regime, many Iraqis are incredulous that the US and Britain appear to assume that a victory would be swift, and bloodless for the allies.

"This fight would not be over Kuwait. This will be an opportunity for the Iraqi people to release the hate they have built up over the last 12 years. Baghdad is a city of seven million people - do they expect to take it in a few days?" Dr Hashemi said.

Yesterday the Iraqi vice president, Yassin Ramadan Taha, dismissed the latest allegations from Dick Cheney, the US vice president, that Saddam was developing a nuclear bomb. The denial was expected to be followed up with a trip for the foreign media to an alleged nuclear site close to Baghdad today - although United Nations weapons inspectors remain banned from Iraq. The development follows a rebuttal by Russia, Germany and France at the weekend to join, or back, the US in its demands for "regime change" in Iraq.

As well as US and British allegations about Saddam, Iraqi exiles are also waging a campaign to paint the Iraqi leader as one of the greatest threats to world peace after Osama bin Laden.

No links between Bin Laden and Saddam have been proved although the Iraqi leader has backed terrorist groups in the past, among them Abu Nidal's organisation, which many believe masterminded the Lockerbie bombing. But Iraqi exiles, many of them seeking a visa and safe haven in America, have alleged close links between the Saudi-born terrorist and Saddam.

Today a woman who claims to be a long-time mistress of the Iraqi leader told ABC News that Saddam and Bin Laden met twice, the last time in 1996.

Parisoula Lampsos, who said she had been Saddam's mistress on and off for 30 years, told the American TV channel that she personally observed Bin Laden in one of Saddam's palaces in the late 1980s. She said the Iraqi president's son, Uday, told her Saddam also met with Bin Laden in 1996 and gave him money. Ms Lampsos, 54, is in hiding in Lebanon. She said she was smuggled out of Iraq a year ago by a group opposed to Saddam and believes he will try to kill her for speaking out, so she wears a veil as a disguise.

In the interview to be broadcast later this week Ms Lampsos provides details of Saddam's habits and personal life. She claims Saddam tried to have Uday assassinated because he was worried his son would try to remove him from power. Uday was shot and partially paralysed in an assassination attempt. She claims she heard Saddam say: "I will kill him someday. Really, I mean I will kill him." When Uday became paralysed, Ms Lampsos said Saddam told her: "I didn't want it this way. I wanted him to die. It was better for him."