However, Elliott Abrams, special assistant to President George W. Bush and director for Near East and North Africa at the National Security Council, cautioned that the figure reflected a “catastrophic” scenario and that the actual number could be much lower.

The two officials were taking part in a White House briefing aimed at revealing how Washington planned to address humanitarian issues in the event of US-led military intervention in Iraq.

“What we do is plan for the worst case scenario,” Natsios pointed out. “But this is not necessarily going to happen.” He said Americans had devoted themselves over the past several months to a “massive pre-deployment of supplies” in the Gulf region that would enable them to bring assistance to the Iraqi population as fast as possible.

Abrams stressed that currently 60 percent of Iraqis “are completely dependent” on the UN-administered oil-for-food program for their nutritional needs. According to Abrams, the existing Iraqi infrastructure could be maintained throughout the military conflict and used for distribution of humanitarian aid. Natsios, for his part, pointed out that $26.5 million had been already spent to prepare for assistance deliveries in the event of war and an additional $56 million had been earmarked for the effort.

The UN World Food Program said yesterday the invasion of Iraq might disrupt government food handouts to millions of sanctions-hit Iraqis and lead to a wide-scale humanitarian crisis. “There is a very substantial part of the population dependent on the food distribution, and therefore if the system breaks down there will be a major humanitarian crisis,” Torben Due, WFP’s representative in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview in Baghdad.

“The conflict can potentially lead to a large-scale humanitarian crisis... Something should be done to avoid this crisis,” he added. Due said the majority of Iraqis, impoverished by 12 years of UN sanctions and with a large proportion already suffering from malnutrition, solely depend on the government food handouts every month and could be primary victims.