BAGHDAD - Iraq prepared on Tuesday to launch a "popular mobilization campaign" to vent anger at the United States, affirming it was capable of thwarting any US attack. Iraq will "fight the political cholera infecting the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and the world Zionist movement," vowed the daily Al Iraq.

The United States "aims at dismembering the societies of the region," charged the daily Babel, which is run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday. Iraqi media, while blasting Washington for threatening to attack Iraq and topple Saddam on grounds that he is developing weapons of mass destruction, gave no details about a meeting the Iraqi president held Monday with the country's top leadership. On hand at the meeting were deputy chairman of the ruling Revolution Command Council (RCC) Ezzat Ibrahim, Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz and RCC member Ali Hassan al-Majid.

"The Arab masses ... are putting on notice anyone seeking to strip the Iraqi people of their right to national independence," Saad Qassem Hammudi, a senior official of Iraq's ruling Baath Party, told AFP. In a message to Saddam carried in Tuesday's press, Hammudi voiced confidence that Iraq would "come out on top, so long as the hearts of millions of Arabs ... throb with love for the leader Saddam Hussein and Iraq."

Hammudi is also secretary general of the Baghdad-based Congress of Arab Popular Forces, a non-governmental organization which groups a number of Arab political parties, trade unions and other organisations that consider themselves nationalist. The Iraqi parliament was meanwhile getting ready to kick-start an anti-US "popular mobilization campaign" across the country. The campaign, starting on Wednesday, will last through August 4, said Salem al-Kubaissi, who heads parliament's Arab and international relations committee.

Mass rallies will be held during which participants will write "Down with America!" and "Down with Zionism!" on pavements and walls in order to vent their anger at Washington, Kubaissi told AFP. Parliament Speaker Saadun Hammadi on Sunday inaugurated the campaign by writing the slogans in chalk at the entrance of the house. Other MPs followed suit.

The campaign coincides with the arrival in Baghdad of six activists from the US-based "Voices in the Wilderness" group, which has been lobbying for an end to UN sanctions imposed on Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The team, the 44th to be sent by the Chicago-based organization since the 1991 Gulf War, will organize various activities aimed at expressing solidarity with the Iraqi people against US threats of attack and visit towns in the south of the country.