War on Iraq will heighten risk of further al-Qaida attacks

We already know this, but reinforcement is always welcome:

A US-led war on Iraq would heighten the risk of further terrorist attacks by al-Qaida, according to a report.

The report by the Oxford Research Group warns the civilian death toll in Iraq would reach 10,000 from conventional warfare alone.

The Baghdad regime is bent on survival at any cost and would in retaliation use "all available military means", the report says.

This would include chemical and biological weapons, which could in turn trigger a nuclear response from the US and Britain.

The report states a US-led attack is likely to "increase support for organisations such as al-Qaida and to prove counter-productive to peace and stability in the region".

The report, by Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, says: "The United States has sufficient forces to ensure regime destruction but the regime's replacement by occupying forces or by a client regime, even if the war is not greatly destructive, should be expected to increase regional opposition to the US presence...