Task force joins US mission against Saddam

The Defence Secretary’s statement, due for release today, confirms Britain has joined the US in sending a large-scale troop deployment on standby for war.

This will cast doubt on comments by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that the chances of such a war have dropped to 40 per cent, from 60 per cent, over the last month.

Mr Hoon’s task force, code-named NTG-03, will be led by 40 Commando, Royal Marines, currently Britain’s frontline commando response unit. Its 500 men will be backed by 150 soldiers from 29 Commando Regiment.

The frigate HMS Marlborough and the destroyer HMS Liverpool have also been dispatched. The submarine is expected to be Devonport-based HMS Tireless, which carries the same Tomahawk cruise missiles fired on Afghanistan.

The deployment was confirmed as Mr Straw sought to play down the chance of conflict. "There has been so much talk in the newspapers about war, suggestions that the chance of war are 100 per cent, that it’s important to try and correct that impression," he told BBC Radio yesterday.

"What is important for people to understand is that war is not inevitable."

When asked whether the chances of conflict were 40 per cent - a figure given by an unnamed Cabinet minister - he replied "yes".

The British troop deployment mirrors a massive task force sent out by the US Navy yesterday . Reports from the US indicate that the Pentagon wants both US and UK military to be ready for war by 12 January.

This is just days before Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, is due to brief the UN Security Council on his work so far. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which works with Mr Blix’s team, yesterday said they have found nothing.

"We haven’t yet seen any smoking gun yet, if you like, that Iraq has lied in its declaration on the nuclear issue," Mohamed El Baradei, the head of the IAEA, said last night.

"But we’re still very much in the process of an inspection and it’s too early for us to come to any conclusion."

Scores of UN arms teams combed six Iraqi sites for possible chemical, biological or nuclear weapons yesterday, after carrying out a record 16 inspections.

Saddam Hussein yesterday repeated that his country is ready for any invasion and dismissed US threats as the "hiss of snakes and bark of dogs".

"Nothing disappoints and puts down the enemy more than if the people prepare to confront any additional possibility for aggression which is already taking place daily on Iraq," he said. "We have prepared for everything."

It emerged yesterday that the Bush administration has drawn up a detailed plan for occupying Iraq after the invasion, which some sources say will be over in ten days.

The Pentagon is preparing for at least a year and a half of military control of Iraq, with forces that would keep the peace, hunt down Saddam’s top leaders and weapons of mass destruction and, in the words of one of Mr Bush’s advisers, "keep the country whole".

According to the New York Times, a civilian administrator - perhaps designated by the UN - would run Iraq’s economy, rebuild its schools and political institutions, and implement aid programmes.

Only "key" officials of the Saddam government "would need to be removed and called to account", according to a document summarising plans for war trials. Officially, Iraqi oil would remain in "the patrimony of the Iraqi people". But Mr Bush’s team is debating how to protect oil fields during the conflict and how an occupied Iraq would be represented in OPEC - if at all.