WASHINGTON, January 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A U.S. Army infantry division of up to 17,000 troops has been given orders for deployment to the Gulf region, the largest such deployment since the Gulf War 11 years ago, an Army spokesman said Tuesday, December 31.

Meanwhile, Iraq urged Arabs to copy the Korean model in standing up against U.S. and learning from the Korean lesson.

"The Third Infantry Division received notification for deployment on Monday night," Captain James Brownlee, information officer for the Third Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"No timeline or designation has been determined. The region of deployment is Southwest Asia," which includes the Gulf, he said.

The Third Division consists of three mechanized brigades and one aviation brigade. The Second Brigade, several thousand troops based in Fort Stewart, is already in Kuwait, said Brownlee.

The First Brigade, also based in Fort Stewart, the Third Brigade, based in Fort Benning, and the Aviation Brigade based at Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savanah, will begin deploying to the region in the coming weeks, he said.

The Third is a mechanized division equipped with tanks, armored personnel carriers, a variety of armored track vehicles and a Kiowa helicopter wing, said Brownlee.

The United States already has about 65,000 troops in the Gulf and Turkey and earlier this month announced plans to send another 50,000 by early January 2003.

On Friday, December 27, reports said two aircraft carriers, including the USS George Washington, and several other ships, had been ordered to prepare to leave for the Gulf in 96 hours.

"A lot of things will start moving in the next week or so," one defense official was quoted as saying.

The USS George Washington and its carrier group only returned from a tour of the Mediterranean on December 20.

Iraq urges Arabs to copy Korean model

Meanwhile, Iraq urged the Arab world on Wednesday to take inspiration from North Korea.

"We Arabs need to revise our behavior towards the United States, as North Korea has done to be respected," said the daily Babel, owned by President Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday.

"Arabs need to learn the lesson from the Korean example to mobilize in order to stop an attack on Iraq and prevent a U.S.-Zionist crusade in the Arab world," Babel said.

Despite the difference in forces between Pyongyang and Washington, "Korea insists on its right to possess a technology used by the United States to raze Japanese cities (during World War II) and which it still uses to blackmail the world and force it to obey its orders.

"Through its courageous stance, North Korea demands that international law be applied to all in the same manner," the daily said.

UN inspectors ‘still looking’ for weapons, U.S.-British activists slammed War

UN arms inspectors embarked on the 33rd day of their hunt for Iraq's alleged prohibited arms on Wednesday, January 1.

At least two teams left their Baghdad headquarters in the Canal Hotel in four-wheel drive vehicles, an AFP correspondent said.

One team went to a repair center for cars and heavy goods vehicles in Al-Khadra district in western Baghdad.

The other visited Al-Harith Co. in the vast Al-Taji military complex north of the capital.

Around 30 activists from Voices in the Wilderness, a joint U.S.-British campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq, were waiting for the teams as they left their compound.