U.S. Goal: Iraqi Coup to Overthrow Hussein : Policy: Long-term strategy reaches beyond Kuwait. Washington sees the Iraqi leader as a continuing threat.

By DAVID LAUTER

Aug. 10, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

American policy toward Iraq is now aimed at bringing about a coup to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, a senior Bush Administration official said Thursday.

Although President Bush publicly has not gone beyond saying that America’s aim is simply to restore the ousted emir of Kuwait to his throne, officials privately say that the policy goes much further.

Even if Hussein were to suddenly reverse his policy and withdraw from Kuwait voluntarily--a possibility most Middle East analysts dismiss--he would remain a constant threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf, officials said. The U.S.-led embargo on Iraq, which has shut down the nation’s oil industry and begun to threaten its food supply, is designed to end that menace by creating a popular uprising.

“The end game is going to be that the population is going to rise up against him,” the official said. “He’s going to be overthrown.”

Officials would not say whether the Administration has taken any direct steps within Iraq to foment opposition. Iraq, several officials noted, is an extremely closed society that U.S. intelligence has found difficult to penetrate. “You notice he shoots everybody,” one official said.

But American officials in recent days have made contact with two Middle Eastern powers--Syria and Iran--that in the past have tried to subvert the Iraqi government. Also, officials are convinced that the economic embargo will, by itself, create enough fissures within Iraq to eventually bring Hussein down.

The process, the officials say, could be a lengthy one. “This is a long-term operation,” the senior official said. “We’re not talking weeks--we’re talking months.”

Within that process, the next 48 to 72 hours appear to be a critical window. As American troops by the thousands begin to pour into Saudi Arabia, “the buildup is going to make us stronger as days go on,” said Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “If Saddam Hussein understands that, his best option is to strike early.”

Many American officials expect Hussein to do just that. “All his options are for action,” one senior White House official said. “He can’t just sit there forever.”

Rather than try a ground assault through the desert, one likely route of attack could be an attempt to test America’s air power.

The Iraqis, whose experience in aerial warfare is limited to their overwhelming dominance over Iran during the eight-year Persian Gulf War, “may not understand the kind of qualitative difference that exists between their air force and the U.S.,” said one Middle Eastern analyst.

But if no attack takes place, said Aspin, “if you get by the next three to four days and there’s no shooting, then you enter into a war of nerves.”

That war of nerves could be a dangerous one for Bush as well as for Hussein.

“The two leaders are running a race against two different clocks,” said Dov Zakheim, a defense consultant and former senior defense official in the Reagan Administration.

“For Bush, it is a race to end this on his terms before people start losing interest and allies begin trying to end-run the sanctions. For (Hussein), it’s a matter of ending this before his troubles engulf him.

“In the coming days, it will be a question of whether we blink first or the Iraqis.”

Hussein could try to evade the ever-tightening noose by seeking a peace settlement with Kuwait at the Arab summit meeting that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hopes to convene today in Cairo.

But even though Arab leaders might be willing to compromise on a formula that would allow Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait with his power and prestige largely intact, the Bush Administration is expected to resist anything short of a full restoration of the ousted royal government--a demand that Hussein probably cannot afford to meet.

Despite the risks of such a policy, the Administration appears to have concluded that it has no choice but to use the current crisis as a tool to remove Hussein from power. “He’s too dangerous to have around now,” said former National Security Council aide Geoffrey Kemp, now an analyst at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The chances of a popular uprising against Hussein might, at first, seem slim. Iraq is among the most repressive police states left in the world. Hussein celebrated his achievement of full power 11 years ago by executing 21 rivals. He since has cultivated competing intelligence and security forces that spy even on each other in an attempt to prevent any single group from becoming powerful enough to challenge him.

And when Iraq was in the midst of its eight-year war against Iran, Hussein’s population demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice for his regime. A staple of Iraqi television during the war years, analysts note, were appeals to the women of the country to give the government their gold jewelry to be melted down and sold. Night after night, the television showed pictures of women turning in bracelets, earrings and family heirlooms.

Yet despite the repression, there have been signs of opposition to the dictator. There have been repeated reports that Hussein last Friday ordered the execution of several army officers--some reports have claimed as many as 120--who refused to support his invasion of Kuwait.

And as events of the last year in places like Romania have shown, uprisings can take place even within highly repressive states where outside analysts doubted any viable opposition could exist.

Hussein, one Administration official said, appears to believe that he can “ride out an economic embargo.” But Administration analysts, and many outside experts as well, believe that Hussein cannot do so, noting that the deprivations the embargo could cause are far deeper than anything Iraq has experienced in the past.

“During the war, there was profound suffering, but at the economic level, the Iraqis never really suffered because of the munificence of the gulf Arabs,” including the Kuwaitis, who lent Hussein tens of billions of dollars, said Augustus Richard Norton, a senior Middle East analyst with the International Peace Academy in New York.

At the depths of the war, Norton noted, “Baghdad still had food; luxury items were in the stores.” Now, Hussein “will be put to the ultimate test.”

Once that test comes, Hussein “will reach a state where he is going to have to make a decision,” the senior Administration official said: “either face a rebellion” or “strike out and go to war. The feeling is here that these people have gone through eight years of war. There’s no way they’ll be able to sustain the sort of drive he would require.”

“He may make things extremely unpleasant for us” during the next several months, said analyst Kemp. “But I think (Hussein) is doomed.”

The Iraqi leader is now boxed in, Kemp said, and “the box he’s in is his coffin.”

Staff writers Robin Wright and Melissa Healy contributed to this story.