Hussein Proves a Master of the Art of Manipulation : Strategy: He manages to rivet world attention on the fate of hostages--and away from the takeover of Kuwait.

While Iraqi President Saddam Hussein masterfully mobilized the international media and riveted world attention on the fate of foreign hostages in Iraq last week, behind the scenes he was quietly strengthening his hand.

In Kuwait, where the Persian Gulf crisis began a month ago, he consolidated his assets, intensifying what diplomats describe as a large-scale colonization campaign to settle Iraqis in the opulent villas of Kuwait city that were abandoned by their fleeing occupants. And he maintained his siege of the nearly 30 embassies surviving without electricity, running water or sufficient medical care since defying his order to close down.

At home, the Iraqi president stepped up war preparations nationwide, calling up tens of thousands more civilians for the regular army, hastening training of the 1-million-strong civilian Popular Army and enforcing strict new rationing of flour, rice, sugar and other vital commodities cut off by an international embargo.

Such is the shape of Saddam Hussein’s evolving battle plan in what has now become a war of nerves between himself and the world powers ranged around him--a war of propaganda, perception and perseverance, staged against the backdrop of a military stalemate.

“It’s a high-stakes poker game now,” one senior diplomat in Baghdad said. “The only question is, how good is Saddam Hussein’s hand?

“He’s got Kuwait. He’s got the hostages. And he’s got an iron grip on his people. That’s a lot.

“But on the other side, you’ve got the largest international military force assembled since the Second World War,” he continued. “Now it’s all a question of how Saddam plays the hand he has. And he’s got a better poker face than almost anyone else around.”

Nonetheless, in many of his moves last week, there were clues to the strategy of the enigmatic Iraqi ruler. And those indicators, along with interviews by The Times with key Iraqi aides and independent Middle East experts in Baghdad, provide an increasingly clear picture of Saddam Hussein’s short-term plan.

It is a strategy that combines international intimidation and pressure politics with an intensive public relations campaign aimed at audiences both at home and abroad. And at the heart of it all is the desire to avert military confrontation and divert world attention from Kuwait while he consolidates Iraqi rule there.

“On the diplomatic front, Iraq tries to get to the public opinion in America and push the public opinion into turning against George Bush,” Naji Hadithi, a key media adviser to Hussein, said during a frank interview Friday in outlining Iraq’s strategy in the present crisis.

“Iraq also keeps the nationals of countries allied with America (as hostages) to put pressure on them so eventually their governments will try to persuade George Bush to pull his forces out of the region,” Hadithi added.

But above all, he said, “Iraq tries to avoid war and seek ways to peace”--and for good reason, according to many Western analysts in Baghdad.

“The last thing Iraq can afford right now is an actual war,” one senior Western diplomat said. “They’re still recovering from their brutal eight-year war with Iran, and even Saddam Hussein knows that the military force assembled all around him can wipe his nation off the face of the earth.

“The key to their strategy is to stall. Time is on their side. And, in the meantime, (they) try to shift the focus away from Kuwait and onto the hostages and try to build up public support, particularly within the Arab world.”

Indeed, the propaganda war was the most visible part of Hussein’s strategy last week, an image-building campaign so sophisticated that one diplomat in Baghdad said it rivaled the work of a top Madison Avenue ad agency.

By deciding to open the doors of his nation to more than 300 foreign journalists, the man President Bush has likened to Adolf Hitler was shown on prime-time American TV announcing that he would release hundreds of foreign women and children. He has been pictured with former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, CBS anchorman Dan Rather and hostage Rachel Blears, the cherubic 6-year-old British girl who has said on camera, “He doesn’t want war. I know because I was there.”

The campaign, even by the Iraqis’ own admission, is a transparent one.

“It’s very important to us that a positive image about us and about the president be understood by the people of the world,” Latif Jasim, Hussein’s minister of information and culture, told The Times.

To do so, Jasim’s ministry deliberately concentrated on television, approving visas for dozens of TV crews while initially denying them to most newspapers and wire services. The visual medium was considered far more powerful and infinitely easier to control.

Virtually every image the world saw of Iraq on television last week, for example, was transmitted from a single satellite feed point, where an official censor worked overtime blacking out or simply unplugging any pictures that cast Hussein or the country in a negative light.

Videotape of the scores of bread lines that form throughout the city each day was banned. So were interviews with diplomats or anyone speaking out against Hussein or his nation. And interviews with foreign hostages who hinted at criticism of the Iraqi government during an official meeting with the media were eliminated from every network that tried to transmit them.

The hostage meeting was a stark illustration of how tightly Iraq guarded and steered its image throughout the weeklong propaganda onslaught.

The more than 100 journalists who covered the event waited nearly six hours while the Information Ministry sought permission from the army. Then they were herded through the military cordon surrounding Baghdad’s Mansour Melia Hotel, where the women and children were confined to their floors between meals and exercise hours. Finally, they were turned loose in a frenzy of interviews with about 50 of the hostages who agreed to the meeting.

“You can ask whatever you like, write whatever you like, shoot whatever you like,” an Information Ministry guide announced to the media mob just before the session began. But a few minutes later, he added, “You are going to meet women and children only. Any shooting of a man will be censored.”

As a further illustration of Iraq’s attempt to shape international image-makers, Hussein himself agreed to be interviewed by Rather and Jackson--on the condition that the interviews not be edited in any way before they were aired.

Looking back over the weeklong media blitz, the senior Western diplomat in Baghdad concluded that the Iraqi president had won the first round of the propaganda battle.

“He succeeded in diverting all attention away from Kuwait, which is the only real issue in the whole affair,,” the diplomat said. “It was really quite brilliant when you think about it. And it is certainly a key factor in his present strategy.”

But the diplomat, who has been posted in the Middle East for many years, added that he believes Hussein’s sudden announcement that he would release the foreign women and children--finally carried out Saturday--was not simply a publicity stunt. It was, he said, also an illustration of a distinct trait in the Iraqi mind.

“People should not distinguish too much between the way Saddam Hussein does things and the way the Iraqis in general do things,” he said. “They often come on very strong, stand their ground for several weeks and then back down just a bit as a demonstration of their kindness. It keeps their enemies guessing.”

As an illustration, he cited a Revolutionary Command Council edict, approved earlier this year, permitting Iraqi men to legally murder their wives if they are caught in adulterous situations. The new regulation reportedly came in response to complaints from the thousands of Iraqi troops who came back from the Iranian front after the war to find their wives had been unfaithful.

The edict touched off a predictable wave of protest from women and religious leaders, and, three weeks later, it was dropped in a move cast as a humanitarian gesture.

“If nothing else,” the Western diplomat concluded, “Saddam Hussein is a man who understands his people--and he knows how to control them in almost every conceivable way.”

Not surprisingly, then, Hussein’s domestic campaign blitz last week was even more intensive than his international one.

His every contact with the outside world and every word of every speech was broadcast and published again and again in Iraq’s state-monopoly media. New portraits and statues of Hussein appeared throughout Baghdad, adding to the thousands already there. And, at every opportunity, the Iraqi leader cast the crisis as a critical test of Iraqi nationalism.

“We are Iraqis, and we are being blockaded by superpowers,” Hadithi, who edits the English-language national daily, said in paraphrasing the president’s principal theme for his home audience. “That’s a source of Iraqi pride, to stand up to this challenge from far more powerful nations that looked down on the Iraqi as inferior for so long.”

And Hadithi insisted that the campaign is working, despite the economic hardships already taking hold on the Iraqi people.

“We have our own oil, and Iraqis can be content if Saddam Hussein tells them, ‘Eat bread and dates alone, and be content.’ They won’t complain, and they won’t grumble,” he said.

Although a few Iraqis interviewed by The Times did complain and grumble, conceding in hushed tones that they have had to endure days without even bread, all did so in the context of their ability to survive the hardship--and their admiration for their leader, whom they see as holding the fate of the world in his hands.

“Saddam Hussein is a great leader of Iraqi people,” one Iraqi professional, who asked not to be further identified, said when asked his opinion of the president. “You just look around. He is everywhere. He knows everything. He is very strong. He got Kuwait back for us, and now even George Bush is afraid of him.

“I know all these things,” he said. “All Iraqis know these things. Just watch the television, and you will see.”