Baghdad, Iraq ? Coalition warplanes struck air defense targets Wednesday in southern Iraq, and a key Iraqi official said the United States and Britain were bent on war with Baghdad to subjugate the Middle East.

Concerns that war is imminent have mounted, with the United States and Britain announcing the dispatch of thousands more troops and weapons to the Persian Gulf region because of misgivings about Iraq’s commitment to abandon weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq insists it has no such weapons and maintains that claims to the contrary by Washington and London are simply a pretext for war.

“The aggressors in Washington and London are preparing for a devastating aggression against … the people of Iraq, and they would like once again to destroy the City of Peace (Baghdad) as they did in 1991,” Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told a visiting South African delegation Wednesday.

Aziz said U.N. arms inspectors, who returned to Iraq in November after a four-year hiatus, had strayed beyond the search for weapons of mass destruction.

“They are searching for other information about Iraq’s conventional military capabilities, the Iraqi scientific and industrial capability in the civilian area, and also espionage questions,” Aziz said.

U.S. warplanes struck Wednesday against air defense communication sites between the cities of Al Kut and An Nasiriyah. The U.S. Central Command said the attacks occurred after Iraqi air defense forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at U.S. planes patrolling the southern “no fly” zone and Iraqi military aircraft entered the zone.

Meanwhile, the official Iraqi News Agency said Saddam held a third day of meetings Wednesday with military commanders, encouraging them not to fear a technologically superior foe.

“In aerial combat, there is a disparity in weapons, but on the ground, men fight with their guns and it’s enough for the men to have bombs, bullets, a loaf of bread, water and a gun,” Saddam was quoted as saying. As long as Iraqi forces receive the support of the people, “the enemy will be defeated,” Saddam added.

The U.N.’s top inspectors are to deliver an interim report on Iraq’s weapons programs Thursday in New York that is expected to accuse Iraq of failing to answer key questions about its programs but offer no new evidence that Iraq has amassed weapons of mass destruction.

That lack of evidence has emboldened U.S. allies opposed to war, who say inspectors’ failure to find a smoking gun bolsters their arguments against a military invasion of Iraq.

The European Union announced Wednesday that it would meet with Arab leaders in late January in hopes of averting a war. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose country just assumed a seat on the U.N. Security Council, pledged to “do all we can to prevent a military dispute” in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a group of American peace activists is in Baghdad to protest a possible U.S. war with Iraq and to promote peace through personal contacts with Iraqis.

Members of Peaceful Tomorrows. a group founded by relatives of Sept. 11 victims, on Wednesday met Iraqis in Baghdad who also lost loved ones in an attack — but in 1991, when U.S. warplanes struck an Iraqi bomb shelter during the Gulf War.

“Suffering is universal and it connects us all,” activist Kristina Olsen said. “I hope some sort of healing has come about as a result of us listening to the people here.”

Elsewhere, Philippine Foreign Minister Blas Ople said Arab governments were trying to convince Saddam to step down and go into exile. Ople, speaking to reporters in Manila, said he learned of those efforts by Arab ambassadors whom he refused to identify.

The German newspaper Tageszeitung said Russian officials had been in Baghdad since November evaluating chances of Saddam stepping down. The newspaper said Russian President Vladimir Putin would send a special envoy to Baghdad to finalize details if Saddam appeared willing to accept a Russian offer of exile.

Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unidentified “high-ranking Russian official” as denying that Moscow was working toward Saddam’s departure, saying there were “no grounds for the Iraqi leader to request political asylum anywhere, including in Russia.”