The US state department says it is no sabre-rattling. Are we to understand then that it is more serious than that?,Frprn what was a veijed threat to S’addam Hossein, contained in US President Bill Clinton's State of the Union address last Wednes-• day, it is now rumblings of a possible military strike on Iraq that are gaining in audibility throughout the world. The hatch over the vocabulary of Pentagon and the idiom of military analysts we had grown so familiar with more than seven years ago during the Operation Desert Storm is being removed symbolically, if not really as yet.

There is no invaded Kuwait now nor a motivational springboard to form a grand alliance to punish an Iraq gone pariah through a total disregard for territorial integrity of a neighbour. Why then is the attempt to recreate the Gulf situation of 19$0, even if in part only?

While the US and Britain are apparently moving in on a tough action plan to 'chasten' Saddam for his refusal to let the UN weapons inspection team work at some exclusive places in Iraq, the latter in an updated version of its position has demanded an end to the dominant presence of US and British representatives on the body as compared with those of other nationalities. France, China and Russia are opposed to any reaction overkill in Iraq whose economy is already badly battered to a point of profound humanitarian concern. The scope for pacific UN intervention in the matter has not been exhausted as yet. And this is the option we would like all the world powers to exercise their minds on to avert a new crisis in the multipolar matrix of international relations.

Iraq does not pose any serious security threat to the region, not at least an imminent one, to warrant a superpower military posturing against it. In a bid to destroy the so-called Iraqi potential for a weaponry of mass destruction let's not stimulate fundamentalism in the world.