WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq has sharply improved its air defenses since U.S. and British warplanes pounded its anti-aircraft network in February, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.
Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference the Iraqi military continued to install fiber-optic communications cables, boosting its potential to shoot down Western aircraft over two ''no fly'' zones. (Read photo caption below).
But he declined to signal if another U.S.-British raid might be launched like the one on Feb. 16 in which radars, anti-aircraft sites and communications stations in southern Iraq and near Baghdad were attacked.
Asked if Chinese technicians were still helping provide fiber-optics to Iraq, as the Pentagon previously charged, he responded, ``I don't know if I care to answer that.''
The problem with raids to damage fiber-optic cables and other air defenses was that the cables could be replaced, the secretary said.
He was asked about stepped-up attempts this year by President Saddam Hussein's military to shoot down U.S. and British warplanes, which have been policing the no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq for nearly a decade. Pentagon officials said Iraq came close to shooting down an unarmed U.S. U-2 spy plane over southern Iraq last month and have reported the Iraqis apparently fired a missile at a U.S. electronic observation aircraft in Kuwaiti air space.
``What happens is that it (the quality of Iraqi air defense) goes up and then it is degraded, and it goes up and it is degraded,'' the secretary said of periodic bombing attacks on Iraqi anti-aircraft and radar installations in the no-fly zones.
Rumsfeld said regional U.S. commanders had the ability to order retaliatory strikes when aircraft were fired on, and ``to look at a host of other things that can be done,'' including perhaps changing flight patterns.
U.S. and British warplanes have been patrolling the no-fly zones since just after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq was banned from using all aircraft, including helicopters, in the air exclusion zones, set up by Western powers to protect minority Kurds and Shiites in Iraq from attack by Saddam's military.
No allied aircraft have been lost in the patrols, although the Iraqi military has repeatedly fired anti-aircraft guns and missiles at the warplanes, which respond by dropping bombs and firing missiles at Iraqi air defense sites.

PHOTO CAPTION:
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld talks with reporters about Iraq at the Pentagon in Washington Friday, Aug. 3, 2001. Iraq has rebuilt its air defenses since U.S. and British warplanes attacked radar and communications targets around Baghdad on Feb. 16, Rumsfeld said Friday. He offered no indication of whether or how the United States would respond, but he seemed to hint that any retaliation would go beyond the limited set of targets in the February raid. (AP Photo/Hillery Smith Garrison)
- Aug 03 6:18 PM ET