THOUSANDS of US Army combat troops will begin heading for the Gulf within days, starting a concerted military build-up that will double the size of US forces within striking distance of Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has signed a directive ordering elite troops, infantry brigades, aircraft carrier groups and air force combat squadrons to prepare to move. The force could be ready to go to war by mid-February.

The US Navy has activated one of its 1,000-bed hospital ships, the Comfort, preparing a trauma centre which will sail to the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia within days.

The first to move will be 15,000 troops from 3rd Infantry Division in Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, Georgia, who are specialists in desert fighting. It will be the first deployment of a full combat division of US forces, including tanks and attack helicopters, to the region since the 1991 Gulf War.

Mr Rumsfeld’s 20-plus page document brings into the open the final stages of a build-up of US military might in the region which has been continuing steadily for months. It is likely to mean some 50,000 US troops heading to the Gulf in the coming month to join the 60,000 American military personnel already there.

The Pentagon is finalising plans that would see the initial stages of a war fought before the US had completed its build-up. Some 75,000 US troops would be involved in the initial stages, but up to 250,000 reinforcements would join them later. The fighting force would be about half the 550,000 US troops amassed before the 1991 Gulf War.

In the coming days similar moves are likely to be announced by the Ministry of Defence, which has already hired merchant ships to move hundreds of tanks, armoured personnel carriers and artillery to the region. The likely British contribution to the war would be a strengthened armoured brigade of some 12,000 troops, as well as hundreds of Royal Marines. A six-ship naval task force, led by the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, is due to sail for the region later this month. The RAF is expected to reinforce its squadrons already based in the area.

The overt manoeuvrings, however, risk a new rift between Washington and the United Nations, sparking accusations that President Bush has already judged the new regime of UN weapons inspectors to have failed before they report back to the 15-strong Security Council on January 27.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, said that he saw no cause for strikes against Iraq until that date because Baghdad was co-operating with the weapons inspectors.

Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, will brief the Security Council next week on the results of his team’s searches in Iraq. He plans to go to Baghdad in mid-January to tell the Iraqis that they must comply fully with the UN or risk triggering an attack by the US-led coalition.

Publicly, Mr Bush continues to insist that he has yet to make a decision about war. On Tuesday, he scolded a reporter who had suggested war was inevitable. “You said we’re heading to war in Iraq. I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war in Iraq. I’m the person who gets to decide, not you.”

Similarly British officials insist that no decision has yet been taken to go to war and that the only way to force President Saddam Hussein to comply is to build up a credible military threat to his regime.

British and US jets struck an Iraqi defence radar yesterday after it was moved into the southern no-fly zone 130 miles southeast of Baghdad.

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