Saddam Hussein has said Iraq should give the United Nations weapons inspectors a chance to show the country has no banned weapons.

It was the Iraqi leader's first public comments since inspections resumed last week - and a sharp contrast to more belligerent statements made by his vice-president on Wednesday.

We are absolutely sure they have continued to develop weapons of mass destruction

US Secretary of State Colin Powell

He urged his people to be patient in the face of what he called "unjust, arrogant, debased American tyranny".

However, in Washington President Bush's spokesman dismissed the Iraqi leader's remarks.

"Iraq has lied before and is lying now about whether they possess weapons of mass destruction," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told journalists.

On Wednesday, Washington called for the inspections to be intensified, in another indication that it feels the searches are unsatisfactory.

Iraq has until Sunday to comply with a UN resolution and submit a report of all its weapons programmes - which it continues to assert do not exist.

President Bush has insisted that it will not be acceptable for Baghdad to deny the existence of the weapons in the dossier.

One of the country's most senior officials, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, said on Thursday he believed war was practically unavoidable but Iraqis would fight.

He told America's ABC channel that it would be a "miracle" if war did not occur because Washington was seeking any "pretext" to start one.

He warned that Iraqis were "not chickens" and had been issued with guns to fight off any invasion.

"You can find a gun in every house in Iraq, and all these guns will be used against any invasion of Iraq, not against the leadership and the government of Iraq," he said.

Brief respite

In a speech carried by Iraqi television to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Saddam Hussein said Iraq had accepted the inspectors "to keep our people out of harm's way".

They were giving the inspectors the chance, he said, "to disprove the American allegations that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction".

No inspections are taking place on Thursday or Friday out of respect for Eid al-Fitr, the festival celebrating the end of the holy month.

The BBC's Ben Brown reports from Baghdad that Iraqis have been enjoying themselves in the city's parks and funfairs.

They were making the most of peace, our correspondent says, while they could, knowing that war might be just around the corner.

War course

Secretary of State Colin Powell, considered a relative moderate in the Bush administration, said the US was certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

"We are absolutely sure... that Iraq has had weapons of mass destruction in the past, we are absolutely sure they have continued to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we are sure they have in their possession weapons of mass destruction."

On Wednesday, Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan seemed to be raising the stakes by accusing the weapons inspectors of being spies.

Ramadan made the harshest attack on inspections so far

He added that Iraq was thinking of calling in neutral third parties to check weapons sites after the UN had inspected them.

A spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has fielded some of the inspectors, rejected the spying charge.

She also defended the experts' work after Washington ratcheted up the pressure on Wednesday by demanding that the inspections be more "aggressive".

"We believe we are doing the job we need to be doing. We have been unannounced and thorough," Ms Fleming said.