OPPOSITION within Iraq to President Saddam Hussein’s regime has surged in the past few weeks, with anti-Saddam graffiti and literature appearing in areas supposedly under Baghdad’s control, the Foreign Office said yesterday.

Citing interviews with Iraqi asylum-seekers arriving in Britain, officials claimed that the modest but significant unrest in central Iraq has unnerved the authorities, who have taken steps to shore up their flagging support and to crush dissent.

The evidence of the asylum-seekers was first alluded to by Tony Blair on Tuesday, when he told MPs that the pressure on Baghdad was beginning to show. “There is no doubt at all that as a result of the pressure there, the regime in Iraq and Saddam’s immediate entourage, there is evidence that they are weakening, they are rattled about the build-up of forces,” he said.

Yesterday General Richard Myers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Pentagon had also picked up reports of dissent. “There are some indications about unrest in some of the Iraqi leadership. But just hints. We have not seen anything (about) purges by Saddam,” he said.

Yesterday the Foreign Office fleshed out the claims. Officials insisted that a consistent pattern had emerged from scores of interviews with refugees and defectors from Iraq, who have arrived in their thousands in Britain over the past months. Most of the refugees are Iraqi Kurds from the north, but also include former civilian members of the regime from central Iraq, the bedrock of Saddam’s support.

“A lot of them are coming out and saying there is increased dissent in Iraq — for example more anti-regime leaflets being circulated, more underground activity,” one official, who described the accounts as “consistent and credible”, said.

Anti-Saddam slogans, such as “For how long will the Iraqi people sleep?”, have been daubed on statues and photographs of the Iraqi leader. Leaflets predicting Saddam’s downfall have also been circulated. The campaign of dissent, which is punishable by death for anyone caught, has apparently been co-ordinated by two opposition groups emboldened by the prospect of a looming war. The Iraqi authorities are said to have cracked down on suspected opponents. But they have also attempted to buy the loyalty of people close to the regime with payments and increased rations of food.

Toby Dodge, an expert on Iraq at Warwick University, said that the reports were credible and were supported by independent sources inside the country.

“There is now a strong sense that the regime’s downfall is coming,” Mr Dodge said. In particular, he said that the Iraqi Communist Party, which was purged by the ruling Baathists 30 years ago, has an active network in the country.

Last night Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, ruled out the possibility of Saddam leaving his country to avoid a US-led war. “He will continue leading Iraq until the last minute of his life,” he told ABC News in America.

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