DOHA - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday there was no question that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and said Baghdad had no choice but to give them up as "the game was up."

"It is clear that the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. The issue is not whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld told the U.S. cable channel CNN in an interview in Doha due to be broadcast later on Thursday.

"The issue is whether or not the Iraqi government has made a decision that the game is up and...will comply with the United Nations resolution and it will disclose what it has and participate in a process with the U.N. monitoring inspections to disarm itself of those capabilities," he said.

Iraq denies possessing banned weapons and submitted a 12,000-page dossier on its weapons programs to the United Nations at the weekend in line with a tough Security Council resolution threatening Iraq with "serious consequences" if it failed to cooperate with the inspectors.

Asked how close the United States was to a war with Iraq, Rumsfeld said: "That's not knowable really, it depends on how the Iraqi government responds to the U.N. resolution and what the reaction of the U.N. and the Security Council members is to the way they respond."

WEEKS NEEDED TO DECIDE ON IRAQ REPORT

On Iraq's weapons dossier, he said: "I really don't have a preliminary reading...The only fair thing to do is to allow the experts that are currently reviewing it the time that is necessary."

Speaking to U.S. troops in Qatar, Rumsfeld later said: "In a relatively short period of weeks I suspect people will have had enough time to look at it (report), think about it, analyze it and discuss it with other countries and come to some conclusions."

Rumsfeld said the dossier was only one indicator of Iraq's cooperation or lack of cooperation with the United Nations.

He said arms inspectors had so far had not taken out of Iraq those people who might be able to tell more about the country's banned weapons.

Rumsfeld said it was an important stipulation under the U.N. resolution that Iraq should allow this.

"Needless to say it (whether Iraq lets people leave) will be an indicator of cooperation or lack of cooperation," Rumsfeld told about 400 troops at the U.S. Central Command base, including a few British officers as well as French and Dutch airmen.

He said most of what had been discovered by past inspection regimes in Iraq had "been provided to inspectors not by a discovery process on the ground but by defectors, people who got out of the country and knew where the weapons were, knew what the capabilities were, knew where the documentation was."

Washington obtained the first copy of the Iraqi weapons report this week for duplication and distribution to the four other permanent Security Council members.