BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis are finding a brief respite from talk of impending war in the tangled love-life of the country's most famous entertainment export in the Arab world.

The United States is threatening to invade Iraq to remove President Saddam Hussein over the country's alleged weapons of mass destruction program.

But the media in Iraq and the rest of the Arab world is abuzz with reports that popular Iraqi singer Kazem al-Saher has left his Iraqi first wife for another woman.

Newspaper sales rose on the news and tongues are wagging in Baghdad, where the heartthrob no longer lives and access to the lively Arabic entertainment media is limited.

"He married her in Paris," said one woman in a fashion boutique in the affluent Karrada district of Baghdad. "No, but she's Spanish," her companion chirped in. "Anyhow he's free to do what he wants."

"No, no," frowns Walid Khaled, who works in one of a chain of music shops owned by Saher's family. "It's not true."

Government paper al-Jumhouriya, sounding displeased at the news, asked Saher to make a public statement. "We will reserve judgment on whether to believe it until Saher decides whether it is true, or that he will not take a second wife," it said.

The singer, known for pop videos featuring dozens of dancing women, has been based in Cairo with his Iraqi wife and two sons since making it big outside Iraq in the mid-1990s.

STILL IDOLIZED AT HOME

But at home, Saher is still idolized.

"Kazem is everything for people here. He speaks to everyone in his songs and he is very humble. He is an ambassador for Iraq," Khaled said.

"People are wishing and praying he will come back," he said of the romantic balladeer, who last year had a song ranked number six in a BBC worldwide music poll of favorite songs.

Newsagent Abbad Jassem said interest in Saher's love escapades outside Iraq had increased sales of entertainment papers and magazines, such as the weekly al-Maw'id.

"When there is news about Kazem in the paper it sells three times as many copies as normal," he said.

On sale for the equivalent of 25 U.S. cents, the weekly offers translations of reports in Egyptian, Lebanese and Gulf magazines that don't make it into the country or sell at prices which only the rich can afford.

But not everyone was bothered by the reports.

"I heard people talking about it. But I don't care. I didn't have any reaction at all," said Soad, a veiled woman shopping in Karrada.