Embargo Seen Blocking Iraq’s Nuclear Goals : Military: The flow of materials and technology has ended, and foreigners may refuse to aid Baghdad again.

The global trade embargo that United Nations members have imposed on Iraq is impeding that country’s long-held ambition to become a nuclear power, according to specialists in nuclear arms proliferation.

The cutoff of critical imports, both of nuclear technology and of such critical materials as uranium, has slowed the effort substantially, these analysts say, despite Baghdad’s carefully constructed network of procurement agents around the world.

“If this hadn’t happened, they might have surprised the world with their capability in a couple of years,” says David H. Albright, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. “It has hurt them--definitely.”

Although much of the fear about Iraq’s military power center has centered on its arsenal of chemical weapons, the Persian Gulf crisis has brought new urgency to Iraq’s push to achieve nuclear capability as well.

Most experts believe that the Baghdad regime is still several years away from establishing a full-scale nuclear threat. But now, under the worldwide embargo, the inflow of nuclear materials has come to a halt and the timetable clearly is slipping.

Moreover, some analysts believe that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may have proved enough of a shocker to dissuade some countries, especially in the West, from providing nuclear know-how to Iraq, even if the current crisis comes to an end.

“I think the invasion changes everything,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. “There are a lot of countries around that could give this technology to the Iraqis. The question is whether they will do it or not.”

The economic embargo is the latest setback in Iraq’s quest to become a nuclear power--an on-again, off-again bid that it launched in the mid-1970s.

Despite some missteps--Iraq once sought plutonium from an Italian smuggling ring that didn’t have any--the effort shows how a blend of tenacity and cash can push a country significantly along toward establishing its own nuclear program.

France, interested in securing oil supplies for itself, provided important help to Iraq early on, selling Baghdad a powerful nuclear reactor--officially intended for generating electricity and for research--and 27.5 pounds of highly enriched uranium needed for the facility.

But Israel, convinced that Iraq’s nuclear objectives were military, bombed the Osiraq reactor in a controversial June, 1981, air raid.

“I think we would have a serious problem now” if that facility had not been destroyed, said Leonard S. Spector, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The destruction of the Osiraq reactor had a profound effect on Baghdad’s strategic thinking, turning Iraq’s attention away from nuclear arms and focusing it instead on chemical weapons, which it used against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish rebels in the 1980s.

Baghdad also rushed to develop the technology to fire missiles hundreds of miles, using Soviet-supplied Scud missiles and expertise from Italy, Germany and Austria, according to a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank sympathetic to Israel.

As the war with Iran wound down in the late 1980s, Iraq redoubled its efforts to get nuclear arms, with the Osiraq experience much in mind. Baghdad has been aggressive in its push to acquire new technology, but has not always been successful.

In early 1989, for example, the Commerce Department blocked an Iraq-bound shipment of vacuum pumps made by a Rochester, N.Y., firm that appeared to be associated with a process for enriching uranium by turning it into gas.

Last March, U.S. and British customs authorities seized a shipment of Iraq-bound capacitors in a storage shed at London’s Heathrow Airport. The small, can-shaped components, made in San Diego county, can help trigger a nuclear explosion.

Still, few analysts are suggesting that Iraq’s quest for nuclear capability has been blunted permanently. The country already may have enough highly enriched uranium to forge a single crude bomb in two years, or possibly less, according to some estimates.

Some analysts worry less about Iraq’s building a single bomb any time soon and more about what Baghdad may do after the economic embargo ends and it once again can import the technology it needs to resume an ambitious nuclear-weapons program.

In the past, Iraq has imported natural uranium from Brazil, Portugal, Niger and Italy. And it has obtained technical assistance from firms in France, Italy, Germany and China.

At the moment, “You’ve got a hiatus, but what happens when you go back to the situation where there isn’t a global embargo?” asks Spector, the Carnegie Endowment associate.

Any attempt by Baghdad to build a bomb could be detected eventually by international intelligence analysts, risking a possible Western military response. Actually using such a weapon would leave Iraq vulnerable to a devastating counterattack, analysts say.

Rather, the pattern of technology purchases that Iraq has made recently suggests that what Baghdad wants to develop most is the capability to make weapons-grade uranium or plutonium--the “guts” of a nuclear device--in sufficient quantities to build a nuclear arsenal.

Still, the economic embargo, while slowing Iraq’s progress toward nuclear arms, will not eliminate its long-term ability to manufacture bombs.

As a result, some would like to see the United States destroy Iraq’s nuclear capability sooner rather than later.

“If it comes to a war, that will be one of the targets,” says Richard N. Perle, former assistant secretary of defense and now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Just for efficiency’s sake, you might as well do it while you’re fighting a war.”

Fearing what might happen, some argue that the current conflict offers America an opportunity to demolish Iraq’s emerging nuclear capability.

Destroying the program--even if that means replacing the nation’s leadership--has “got to be on the list of things you weigh,” Spector says. “It’s a reality that has to be confronted.”

But Iraq’s current nuclear program, contained in laboratories and facilities that are spread around the country, is a more difficult target than the Osiraq reactor was. And any new technology can be located in concealed, hardened sites to protect it from air attack.

Iraq also is capable of firing missiles into Israel--with chemical warheads, if it chooses--making it far more dangerous for Israel to consider a preemptive strike.