Iraqi PM dismisses death threat

Allawi has promised tough new measures to crush insurgents

The interim leader of Iraq has dismissed a threat to his life made on an Islamic website.

Iyad Allawi said such threats were "expected" and vowed to hunt down the man purportedly behind it, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and other "criminals".

An audio clip on the website said "a useful poison and a sure sword" had been found for Mr Allawi.

An Iraqi official earlier said it was being taken "very seriously" and that security measures needed reviewing.

But Mr Allawi told the BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson he was not deterred by threats from the Jordanian-born militant.

"It is expected because we are hunting him," he said.

Allawi ... you have escaped many times, without knowing it, from well-organised ambushes that we laid Audiotape attributed to Zarqawi Profile: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

"We will get him and we will get all the criminals and get them to face a just trial."

Hamed al-Bayati, the Iraqi deputy foreign minister, told the BBC World Service's Newshour programme that he had listened to the message and believed it could have come from Zarqawi himself, whom he described as "very dangerous".

He said Iraqi soldiers and police were helping to secure the streets before the handover of sovereignty at the end of this month, but "we should really consider security measures before and after 30 June".

The US has blamed Zarqawi and affiliated groups for a spate of car bombings and other attacks in Iraq.

Most recently he has been linked to the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq, Kim Sun-il.

The tape called Mr Allawi "the symbol of evil and agent of infidelity", adding: "you are a hypocrite".

"We pledge to go all the way without giving up, so that you will meet the same fate as Ezzedine Salim," said the voice, referring to the head of the now dissolved Iraqi Governing Council, who was assassinated in a Baghdad suicide car bombing on 17 May.

Elsewhere in the tape the voice described Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a lackey of the United States and referred to Mr Allawi as "the Karzai of the new Iraq".

"We do not want to replace the American despot (in Iraq) with an Arab despot," he said.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a Nato role in Iraq grew on Wednesday when Mr Allawi formally asked the alliance to help train Iraq's security forces.

A Nato official, declining to be identified, said Mr Allawi made his request in a letter to Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.