"We don't have anything to report," said Captain Danielle Burrows of the forward command and control center in Doha, Qatar. "We don't comment on operational matters before they happen."

She was speaking at the As-Saliyah base that will direct a US-led assault Iraq.

US President George W. Bush on Monday gave Saddam and his family 48 hours to leave Iraq, warning that US and British forces would then consider themselves free to begin military action.

In Kuwait City, a spokesman for US and British forces refused to say whether any allied troops were moving into Iraq, minutes after the expiration of the deadline.

"We are not going to divulge that information," the spokesman, US Major Chris Hughes, told AFP.

He said he was "absolutely not" going to say whether any of the 180,000 coalition soldiers massed near the Kuwait-Iraq border had started moving forward, nor whether any other units had started operations.

"As the president said, it's going to be at a time and place of our choosing," Hughes said.

Hughes said the senior US and British commanders were deciding their moves "in close consultation with the president."

He added that "any number of things could happen," pointing out that several Arab states had offered exile to Saddam and his family.

The spokesman also confirmed statements from London that US and British warplanes had conducted attacks on Iraqi defences -- including, for the first time, an artillery position -- in the "no-fly" zones prior to the passing of the deadline.

Many of the US and British units that have been positioned in the desert in northern Kuwait and on warships in the Gulf have indicated their readiness to attack Iraq.

Bush has said military action would primarily be aimed at removing Saddam from power and getting rid of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

He has also claimed al-Qaeda was being sheltered and aided by Saddam, and set out a vision of democratic change sweeping across the Middle East as a result of a US invasion of Iraq.

Despite months of intensive diplomatic lobbying, Washington and London failed to win sufficient support from the UN Security Council for an explicit mandate authorising the use of the force against Baghdad.

Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced this week they would go ahead with war regardless, saying Iraq posed a threat to both their countries.

WAR.WIRE