Iraq yesterday marked the 11th anniversary of its invasion of Kuwait with defiant rhetoric against the country it occupied for seven months.

State-run newspapers hit out at Kuwaiti rulers, blaming them for Iraq's invasion on August 2, 1990. The papers said Iraq had no option but to send troops into Kuwait to repulse what they described as a conspiracy by the United States and Kuwait against Baghdad.

"Now after all these years have the Kuwaiti rulers learned from the bad lesson of the invasion? Have they abandoned their conspiratorial role against Iraq?" the ruling Baath party Al Thawra asked.

"No. They have not. They are still conspiring against Iraq," it said in a front page editorial.

Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait after weeks of wrangling over oil production quotas. Seven months later they were driven out by a U.S.-led multinational force based in Saudi Arabia.

Al Thawra also hit out at Kuwait's rulers for providing U.S. and British warplanes with facilities to "launch daily aggression against Iraqi cities and towns."

U.S. and British warplanes use Saudi and Kuwaiti air bases to patrol no-fly zones in southern Iraq. They use a Turkish air base to patrol northern Iraq.

Tensions between the United States and Iraq over the patrols heightened last week when Iraqi anti-aircraft defenses narrowly missed a U.S. U-2 spy plane.

Washington responded by saying it would use military force against the Iraqi government in a "more resolute manner" than in the past.

Baghdad replied by saying it was capable of achieving a "final victory" over the United States.

The U.S. State Department, asked to comment on the anniversary, said it was a chance to remember that the international community had united against Iraq.

"The international community still stands against Iraq's attempts to threaten its neighborhood and...we do need to continue our efforts because Iraq has evidently not changed its intentions," spokesman Richard Boucher told a briefing.

"We have seen over the last months, if not years, continuing signs that Iraq is attempting to evade inspection, to evade its responsibility and to evade its obligations under the UN resolutions," he added.

The Iraqi press also blamed Kuwait for the continuation of 11 years of crippling UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after the invasion.

"The Kuwaiti rulers are working with all dirty means to tighten the embargo on the Iraqi people," the official Al Qadissiya newspaper said. "The dwarfs in Kuwait also still voice their anti-Iraq statements to match those of the American administration," it added.

The UN embargoes include a ban on Iraq's oil exports. But since December 1996 the United Nations has allowed Baghdad to sell oil to buy urgently needed food and medicine.

Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah said in press remarks published on Wednesday that Iraq continued to pose a threat to Kuwait and the Gulf region.

The Iraqi newspapers however stopped short of declaring Kuwait part of Iraq as was the case in the early years after the invasion.

In 1994, as part of efforts to get the sanctions lifted, Iraq recognized Kuwait as an independent state within the borders demarcated by a UN commission.