News ANALYSIS : Hussein, in Role of Victim, Seeks Bloc to Foil Embargo

Confronted with the increasing superpower unity signified by today’s summit in Helsinki, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is pursuing a new, more passive strategy designed to exploit the changing world political alignment, according to U.S. and Arab officials and analysts.

The Iraqi leader’s new gambit is two-pronged: Politically, his diplomatic appeals are now clearly aimed at forming a new bloc, culled from Arab, Islamic and Third World communities, to circumvent the international embargo and diplomatic pressure from the superpowers.

Militarily, Hussein is holding back his million-man army in Iraq and occupied Kuwait to force the United States to make the first aggressive move. Under siege economically and diplomatically, Baghdad wants to make Iraq look like the victim rather than the aggressor.

Hussein is seeking to link three issues that have served to motivate all popular Arab movements in the post-colonial era: Islam, pan-Arabism and, in a region where 6% of the population controls 50% of the wealth, social justice.

Although his success so far has been mixed, Hussein has tied all three issues to the emotional question of a foreign presence, which raises bitter associations with past Western colonial domination of the region.

“The way he has played the Islamic and nationalist cards has been very clever,” said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a noted Egyptian political scientist. “He has managed to win the support of about 20% of the Arab world, while confusing the rest by turning the question of foreign troops into an issue that competes with the invasion of Kuwait.”

Over the past week, Hussein’s speeches have been heavily laced with Islamic citations, a glaring anomaly for the leader of a strictly secular, socialist nation. In a televised speech Saturday addressed to President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Hussein warned that “angels” are watching what they do.

“I am not appealing to either of you,” the Iraqi leader said in remarks read by an announcer. “I am relying on God.”

Hussein also has appealed to Arab nationalism and developing nations for humanitarian aid, specifically food and medicine, his greatest immediate vulnerability. Virtually all of the countries that are considering sending food and medicine to Baghdad are Arab, Muslim or developing nations. Among them are Brazil, India, Yugoslavia and Iran.

On the military front, Hussein has defied early predictions that he would boldly challenge the international economic and diplomatic squeeze. The Iraqi leader instead is now publicly playing “softball’ on each of the key issues--hostages, economic sanctions and military aggression--that could lead to confrontation, according to a senior U.S. analyst.

“It looks like he’s not going to give us the pretext to attack,” the analyst said. Hussein, he said, is calculating that the United States “will then have to manufacture one which could cost us this impressive international coalition we’ve built.”

On the hostage issue, Hussein gradually has released Westerners, even allowing some of the once-hunted Americans in Kuwait to fly to freedom. Bush Administration officials now believe he may let most of the thousands held in Iraq and Kuwait go free, including men.

“Eventually all women and children will probably be released, but then probably the men too, although over time,” a State Department official predicted.

A Western diplomat in the gulf said Hussein is freeing hostages “in dribs and drabs, luring the West into thinking maybe we can negotiate with this guy.”

The Iraqi leader surprised U.S. and Mideast experts by issuing instructions to Iraqi ship captains not to resist the foreign naval blockade. And he has ordered Iraqi pilots to stay away from the Saudi frontier to avoid U.S. warplanes and a potential clash that could escalate into all-out war.

But Hussein’s public efforts to appear flexible are being matched by fast-paced but less visible events to retrieve the advantage lost after the deployment of foreign forces in Saudi Arabia, U.S. and Arab officials contend.

His long-term goal is to buy time--and potentially, support or sympathy--while his troops fortify defenses and create “facts on the ground” that could make it virtually impossible to restore Kuwait to its independent, pre-invasion status, according to a Saudi official.

Iraqi forces have destroyed land, police and legal documents in Kuwait, including driver’s license records, in what appears to be an attempt to erase any legal record of Kuwait and Kuwaitis before the Aug. 2 invasion.

New Kuwaiti passports have been issued to thousands of Iraqis coming into Kuwait, in many cases postdated to make it unclear when the documents were issued. Meanwhile, up to one-third of Kuwait’s previous population has fled.

“In another six months, you can dislodge Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but you won’t be able to get Kuwait back,” said a Saudi official.

“Right now, it’s going to take years to sort it out. You have to practically go to Kuwait and ask people, ‘Who was your neighbor and what did he look like?’ It’ll be a mess. It’s like going into a computer system and messing up the software.”

If his forces eventually withdraw from Kuwait, by force or under diplomatic pressure, the Iraqi leader hopes to leave behind a populace predominantly supportive of Baghdad--even if the Kuwait government-in-exile eventually returns and decides to hold elections.

“Six months from now, the emir (of Kuwait) can come back and the Kuwaitis say, ‘Hell, no, we don’t want him.’ And most of the Kuwaitis saying this would be Iraqis, and guess who they would vote for,” said a Saudi official.

“His primary goal at this stage is to keep Kuwait,” added a Western envoy in Saudi Arabia. “If he gets anything out of Kuwait, he’s gained.”

Iraqi forces already have acquired enormous quantities of physical and financial booty, from gold deposits to traffic lights and medical supplies.

But U.S. and Arab observers differ on whether President Hussein’s new strategy reflects desperation or cool calculation.

Senior U.S. officials feel he is basically groping to avert a war that he would lose and to survive, both politically and physically.

“He’s setting himself up for a draw. But in the meantime, he’s trying to hang tough,” said the analyst.

“He’s a good tactician, but he’s not a very good strategist,” added a senior Administration official.

But Arab analysts suggest that Hussein may in fact have a well-defined strategy--with some chilling implications that Arab military specialists fear may work.

“Saddam will continue to exploit these differences in the Arab world in an effort to puncture holes in the embargo,” said a senior Egyptian military source.

“Then, if he senses this strategy is working, he will at some point put a proposal on the table, perhaps a partial or conditional withdrawal from Kuwait that will widen the Western and Arab divisions still further.

“If this works, then he has won,” the Egyptian said.

The senior Administration official conceded that the Iraqi dictator might try to “come up with an Arab solution that we can talk to death over the long haul.” But he said that any concessions would probably be “marginal” and unacceptable to the main players in the Persian Gulf crisis.

“All the dialogue will be form and not substance,” added the U.S. analyst.

Another, far more disturbing strategy is now being debated in the Middle East. It holds that a desperate Hussein, contemplating his defeat, may try to drag the entire region down with him.

“This he could easily do by attacking Israel or by sending troops into Jordan to precipitate an Israeli counterattack,” a Western diplomat in the region said.

Such a desperate gamble might not assure Hussein’s survival, but it could instantaneously transform the current inter-Arab conflict into an Arab-Israeli crisis, in turn breaking the strained bonds of the Western-Arab alliance confronting Iraq.

“Then every Arab nation, including Egypt, would be forced to take a different position,” the Egyptian military source said.

Wright reported from Washington and Ross from Cairo. Times staff writer Kim Murphy, in Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.