Baghdad's ambassador to Moscow told President Bush yesterday that an attack on Iraq would unleash a "holy jihad of all humanity" against the United States, and that suicide-bombers were preparing to defend President Saddam Hussein against US-led forces.
"I do not rule out that this war will have no borders, as there are one billion Muslims in the world," Mr Abbas Khalaf told reporters. Citing million-strong anti-war protests worldwide, he said Washington would not only face the wrath of Arab nations.
"It will not be a war between Christians and Muslims. This will be a holy jihad of all humanity against the infidel, or - as he is now called - Bush," Mr Khalaf said.
He spoke in the fluent Russian that has helped him become a familiar figure on television and radio here in recent weeks.
In an interview with Vremya Novostei newspaper yesterday, Mr Khalaf, once a personal translator for President Saddam, said Iraq was already on a war footing as a US deadline for the Iraqi leader to go into exile ticked away.
"We will fight to the last drop of blood," he said. "People are digging trenches. Special reinforcements are being made in and around towns. American forces could enter the towns and that's where we'll bog them down."
Mr Khalaf said he had received requests from about 14,000 Russians to go to Iraq, and that "at the right moment, we will open the door to all honest people."
He said: "There are already volunteers in Iraq from all the Arab countries. They are in special training camps, after expressing their wish to become 'Shahid-kamikazes', so they can meet the Americans with their own bodies."
As US troops in Kuwait made what appeared to be final preparations for battle across the border in Iraq, Emergencies Ministry officials here said they were ready to set up tent camps for war refugees in Iran and Turkey, both of which neighbour Iraq.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, told the UN in New York that Mr Saddam did not offer any immediate threat to the US and there was no legal basis for toppling him.
"If such action occurs, it will not help strengthen the unity of the global community at a time when the world really needs solidarity and unified action, above all to battle such real and shared dangers as international terrorism," he said.
Mr Ivanov has borne the brunt of Moscow's ultimately futile battle to have its anti-war views heard in Washington. An adviser to Mr Mikhail Gorbachev said yesterday that the task was no easier in 1991.
"Not everyone knows this, but Gorbachev twice tried to stop the first Iraq war . . . in telephone conversations with Bush," Mr Viktor Kuvaldin told a Moscow meeting of academics and analysts.
"The second conversation ended with Bush hanging up the phone."