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WASHINGTON, Wednesday (AFP,Reuters) The United States warned Iraq and other potential foes that it is prepared to unleash "overwhelming force" -- possibly nuclear arms -- to retaliate for any attack with weapons of mass destruction.

The admonition was included in a six-page White House policy blueprint entitled "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" that was distributed to reporters a day before it is set to be formally unveiled.

"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including through resort to all of our options - to the use of (weapons of mass destruction) against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies," according to the document.

The warning was reminiscent of then-president George Bush's warning, in a letter on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, that Baghdad would face the "severest consequences" if it attacked US forces with chemical or biological arms.

The missive was widely read as threatening Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with atomic retaliation.

The policy rests on three pillars: Deterring and defending against the use of weapons of mass destruction; bolstering nonproliferation to stem the spread of such weapons; strengthening the US ability to limit the "potentially horrific consequences" of their use.

Meanwhile returning U.N. arms experts carried out their most intensive inspections in Iraq yet on Tuesday as the United States ruffled feathers in the Security Council with its handling of the Iraqi document on its weapons programs.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry accused Washington of trying to find a pretext for war by wresting control from the United Nations of distribution of the nearly 12,000-page document detailing Iraq's weapons program.

The White House dismissed the accusation as "laughable", but fellow-Security Council members like Norway and Syria said they were being treated as second-class powers in the handling of the issue.

U.N. arms experts fanned out to inspect 10 sites across Iraq on Tuesday, including the suspected center of Iraq's nuclear program -- a phosphate facility at al-Qaem, 250 miles (400 km) northwest of Baghdad, said to have produced refined uranium ore.

It was the largest one-day operation by U.N. inspectors since their hunt for alleged banned weapons resumed last month. Al-Qaem is also the furthest the inspectors have traveled beyond Baghdad.

The number of experts in Iraq rose to about 70 with the arrival on Tuesday of about two dozen inspectors. "We can inspect far more sites simultaneously," U.N. spokesman in Baghdad Yashuhiro Ueki told reporters when asked if inspections were now more robust.

Earlier the United States circulated a list of 36 items it wants the U.N. Security Council to put on a restricted Iraqi export roster, ranging from drugs to protect Iraqi soldiers to boats like those used in the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

U.S. officials said they hoped the Security Council could make a decision by the end of next week, before the Christmas holiday and within the 30-day period called for in a Dec. 4 resolution.

At issue is a U.N. roster of civilian goods council members must review separately before they can go to Iraq to make sure they have no military uses.

Meanwhile U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday that Security Council members had criticised the United States for breaking ranks and grabbing Iraq's report on its weapons programmes, intended only for weapons inspectors.

But he rejected charges that by allowing the manoeuvre the United Nations had proved it was Washington's puppet.

Diplomats and U.S. officials said on Monday that after an intense lobbying campaign, the United States received an early and uncut copy of Iraq's 11,807-page weapons declaration and whisked it to Washington for analysis.

"The consensus of the group was that in substance perhaps the decision was fine, but the approach, and the style and the form was wrong because the Council had decided last Friday that nobody would get it," he told an invited audience in New York.

The speech, followed by a question and answer session, was given to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service. It was recorded in London and will be broadcast on Wednesday.

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