Few hours to the much awaited US led war against Iraq, 17 Iraqi soldiers yesterday surrendered to the American forces in northern Kuwait as allied troops moved into final positions ready to unleash a massive assault on Iraq as time ran out for President Saddam Hussein to avoid war by choosing exile.

U.S President George Bush's ultimatum for Saddam and his sons to leave the country expired at 4 a.m. Iraq time today, but there was no sign Saddam would comply, despite a last-minute offer from Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to offer him asylum.

Military sources in Kuwait confirmed the surrender but gave no further details. U.S.-led forces in northern Kuwait have made plans for processing large number of Iraqi soldiers they expect to surrender quickly once war breaks out.

U.S. and British aircraft have been dropping millions of leaflets into Iraq urging soldiers not to resist an invasion.

Instructions being given to Iraqi forces have been specific, including telling them to leave their tanks with their turrets reversed and to abandon vehicles in the open while returning to barracks.

U.S. and British troops mo-ved into the demilitarized zone that straddles the Iraq-Kuwait border yesterday. The zone exte-nds three miles into Kuwait and six miles into Iraq. Soldiers donned chemical suits at desert staging posts that were swept by fierce sand storms.

On aircraft carriers and at land bases, pilots prepared for what is expected to be one of the most ferocious aerial bombardments in history.

Upward of 3,000 satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles will be unleashed from sea and air on targets vital to Saddam's government, officials said.

The strategy, dubbed "shock and awe" by the U.S. military, is designed to destroy Saddam's air defenses, remove his ability to command and control his forces while delivering such a severe psychological blow to Iraqi troops that many will be too stunned and demoralized to resist.

British and U.S. aircraft dropped almost two million leaflets over southeastern Iraq urging Iraqi soldiers not to use weapons of mass destruction or torch oil wells, and advising them to lay down their weapons rather than die for a lost cause.

U.S. planners' biggest fears are that the Iraqis may use chemical weapons or that Saddam loyalists hole up in Baghdad and force invaders to conquer the city street by street and house by house.

Nearly 175,000 American and British troops were in northern Kuwait awaiting any order to sweep northward into Iraq to depose Saddam and rid the country of what Washington charges are huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Iraq denies it has such weapons.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain offered Saddam a home at an emergency meeting of the cabinet in Bahrain. The Gulf country also hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which has its headquarters there.

"The Bahraini ruler said Bahrain...is ready to host Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if he wants to reside there with all dignity," BNA said.

"The king said this initiative from Bahrain came as part of its national responsibility to preserve regional security and stability and assure that the region lived in peace, in addition to sparing Iraq and its brotherly people war," BNA added.

Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates floated a proposal that Saddam should go into exile to avert war. The proposal won informal backing from a number of Gulf countries.

At the United Nations, Russia, France and Germany voiced final objections to a war they, as well as millions of people around the world, had bitterly opposed and tried to prevent.

Five foreign ministers spoke at a U.N. Security Council session to hear a report by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who expressed disappointment that inspections were curtailed only 3 1/2 months after they began.

"We are meeting here today only a few hours before the guns are fired," said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

He said a war against Iraq would exacerbate terrorism in the Middle East, declaring, "To those who think that the scourge of terrorism will be eradicated through what is done in Iraq, we say that they run the risk of failing in their objective."

But he said Paris, which has led the international diplomatic campaign against a U.S.-led war against Iraq, believed it was now time for the international community to pull together and address Iraq's humanitarian needs.

Villepin as well as Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer of Germany, Igor Ivanov of Russia and Farouq al-Shara of Syria, appealed for inspectors to complete their job in the future and for the 15-member Security Council to endorse Blix's work programme, which the United States and Britain so far have refused to do.

"The fact of the matter is that the situation on the ground will change, and so will the nature of the remaining disarmament tasks," U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte told the council. "Considering a work programme at this time is quite simply out of touch with the reality that we confront."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was blunt. "We have to state clearly under the current circumstance that the policy of military intervention has not credibility.

"There is no basis in the U.N. Charter for a regime change with military means." he said.

Ivanov said no U.N. Security Council resolution authorized the right to use force against Iraq outside the U.N. Charter and "not one of them authorizes the violent overthrow of the leadership of a sovereign state."

He said that if there were a great threat to the security of the United States "then Russia, without any hesitation would use all the means available provided under U.N. Charter to eliminate such a threat."

"However, the Security Council today is not in possession of such facts, "Ivanov said, in a reference to the Bush administration's linkage of terrorism to the Iraqi government.

Blix at the meeting, called a day after 134 arms inspectors left Iraq, expressed disappointment that the inspection process was curtailed.

"I naturally feel sadness that three and a half months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction or other proscribed items in Iraq, that no more time is available for our inspections and that armed action now seems imminent," he told