WASHINGTON, Jan 15: Peace activists across the United States are quietly preparing for a show of strength in Washington on Saturday against the Bush administration’s expected military offensive in Iraq.

Organizers say they expect more than 100,000 people to come to the US Capital to show their rejection of the administration’s pro-war policies.

They have been further spurred by media reports of daily troop deployment in the Persian Gulf. Last week, the Pentagon ordered the deployment of additional 62,000 troops and hopes to have more than 150,000 troops in the region by mid-February.

In Dallas, Texas, lawyer Robert B. Dennis plans to leave for Washington this week with 50 other Texans willing to endure a 22-hour bus ride to participate in the Washington rally, says a recent report in the Washington Post.

Amer Mirza, a Web developer from suburban Chicago, has been signing up Muslims in his area for seats on a charter bus he plans to ride.

Casey Chapman, a senior at Catholic Central High School in Troy, New York, will join a dozen other teenagers in a chaperone-driven van.

Organizers say that Dennis, Mirza and Chapman are a fraction of the thousands of people coming to Washington for the national anti-war demonstration.

The rally is scheduled to begin at 11am on the Mall near Third Street and Constitution Avenue Northwest, just beyond the west front of the Capitol.

Scheduled speakers include actress Jessica Lange, Vietnam veteran and author Ron Kovic, former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney and others from labour, peace and Muslim organizations.

Apparently unimpressed by the peace activists, President George W. Bush warned on Tuesday that “time is running out on Saddam Hussein” to avert an American-led attack by disarming voluntarily.

“I am sick and tired of games and deception, and that is my view on timetables,” Bush said before meeting in Washington with the president of Poland, Alexander Kwasniewski. “The United Nations has spoken with one voice. He’s been given 11 years to disarm, and we have given him one last chance.”

Bush’s tough talk intensified a war of nerves centred around Jan 27, the date when United Nations inspectors are to report to the Security Council on the first 60 days of their search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes in Iraq.

Last week, chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council that they had found no “smoking gun” on the existence of such programmes, but they also said that the documentation provided by Iraq failed to answer many critical questions.

Initially, the Bush administration indicated that the Jan. 27 report would mark the start of a “final phase” leading up to a decision on whether to launch military action. But officials have since played down Jan 27 as a trigger for war.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said he sees no reason for an attack on Iraq and is optimistic that war can be avoided if the international community maintains pressure on Saddam Hussein to let the inspectors do their job aggressively.

Nonetheless, he said the United Nations was making plans to deal with an exodus of refugees and potential humanitarian crisis in the event of military action. UN experts are also doing some “preliminary thinking” about a possible post-conflict political organization and administration in Iraq, he said.

Washington is also facing some resistance from its European allies to its war plans. The allies are demanding that any military action must be approved by the United Nations.

“If there’s going to be a war, there will have to be a new UN resolution (supporting the war) because the source of international law essential for us is at the United Nations and the Security Council,” Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told the French parliament on Tuesday.