DUBAI, September 17 (Islamonline.net &news Agencies) - In a new tape aired Wednesday, September 17, ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein called on the U.S.-led occupying forces to leave the country.

"Your withdrawal from our country is unavoidable, if not today then tomorrow… Our aim is not to kill more children of the peoples of America, Britain or elsewhere," said the more than 20-minute message.

It also offered withdrawal negotiations with members of the previous government who are in U.S. custody, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"If you want to negotiate the modalities of the pullout ... you can open a dialogue with officials from the Iraqi leadership who are held by your army as prisoners of war," the voice said.

The speaker, who signed off with "mid-September", urged Iraqis to continue to fight against the U.S.-led occupation.

"You must tighten the noose and increase your strikes against the enemies by demonstrating, writing on walls and demanding your rights ... and above all through armed struggle."

He accused U.S. President George Bush and his administration of "lying" about Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction.

"I tell Bush, in the name of the Iraqi people, 'you lied to yourself, to your people and the whole world.'"

The voice called on the U.N. Security Council and Arab countries to review their positions on Iraq.

He lashed out at the United Nations for being led by the "unjust" United States.

"Know that Iraq and its leaders will refuse any solution that is made while the country is under the shadow of occupation. We will consider it to be a ruse," the voice assured.

Iraqi resistance groups had repeatedly distanced their anti-occupation operations from Saddam.

CIA analysts, for their part, have not yet determined whether it is authentic, a U.S. intelligence official said.

"We are aware of the audio tape purported to be that of Saddam Hussein and a technical analysis is underway to determine the authenticity of the tape," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

"It is premature at this point to reach any conclusions or determine whether it is or is not his voice," the official added.

CIA had, in the past, confirmed the authentic of previous audio and video tapes of the ousted Iraqi president.

In a related development, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Wednesday Saddam had probably destroyed his prohibited weapons ten years ago but pretended otherwise to deter any attack.

"I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991," he told Australian national radio.

U.N. inspectors worked in Iraq for several months in late 2002 and early 2003 and failed to find conclusive evidence of the alleged WMD.

Their absence has become a major embarrassment for the United States and its allies, who used it to justify their invasion in March, AFP reported.

Asked if it was likely Iraq has not had WMD for at least a decade, he said: "Yup, that's right."

"You see, if they didn't have anything after '91, there must be some explanation why they behaved as they did. They certainly gave the impression that they were denying access and so forth," Blix said.

"I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, Beware of the Dog, without having a dog."

Blix pointed out that the rhetoric of official descriptions of the hunt for weapons had been progressively weakened, doubting that any would now be found.

"The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found," he said.

"In the beginning they talked about weapons concretely, and later on they talked about weapons programs, and maybe they'll find some documents of interest but that should have surfaced and, I think, explained."

Blix's suggestions, which he said were already known in the United States, called into question controversial intelligence used by Britain and the United States to justify the war.

On December 7 last year, Iraq made a submission to the United Nations in which it said it did not have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

It was quickly dismissed as false and incomplete by the United States and Britain, which accused Baghdad of failing to disarm as required by Security Council Resolution 1441.

These charges were later used by Washington and London to justify the invasion of the country in late March.

Since then, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been under fire for allegedly ignoring intelligence casting doubt on the case for war.

And Australian Prime Minister John Howard this week was accused of lying over a British intelligence report suggesting a strike on Baghdad would increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks against Western targets.

U.S. officials have also been increasingly keen to downplay the significance of the search for weapons in Iraq.