Iraq 'massing troops'

The US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, said yesterday that Iraqi revolutionary guards were massing against Kurds in the north and that Baghdad had placed its forces on a higher state of alert, according to her spokesman James Rubin, Reuter reports from New York. Ms Albright was speaking at a closed-door Security Council session reviewing sanctions on Iraq, imposed in August 1990 when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait.