NEWS ANALYSIS : U.S. War Plan on Track--but What About the Peace? : Diplomacy: The Bush Administration seems to have come up with the right questions but no answers.

The Bush Administration’s efforts to spell out its postwar plans in the Persian Gulf have exacerbated, rather than allayed, concerns about its long-term diplomatic strategy for the region, according to government and private experts.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III was expected to provide at least an outline of the Administration’s thinking on postwar policy in his two days of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

Instead, in contrast to meticulous U.S. military planning for Operation Desert Storm, Baker listed a series of unanswered questions and long-accepted generalities, such as the need to control the flow of arms to the region after the fighting has ended.

“It was appalling,” lamented an official specializing in the Middle East. “Six months into this crisis, and we really should be in the final stages of planning.”

Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution, was equally blunt: “How can you know what your war aims are if you don’t know what your peace aims are?”

Indeed, while the Administration may be on schedule in prosecuting the war, the apparent lack of progress in developing a long-term diplomatic strategy is drawing increasing fire from Mideast specialists, Democratic lawmakers and even some Administration insiders.

Congressional Democrats express growing frustration with the Administration’s reluctance to provide specifics on the five key issues identified by Baker: Persian Gulf security, disarmament, the Arab-Israeli conflict, economic stabilization and energy policy.

The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East has on four occasions officially requested Administration testimony on U.S. planning for the region. The last testimony was delivered in mid-September by John Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs. So far, the requests have been indefinitely deferred.

The change in coordinators came as Israel was gradually lifting the longest curfew imposed since it captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip 24 years ago.

In response to the apparent policy dearth, the House Democratic Caucus began its own briefings last week to develop a diplomatic strategy to “parallel” the war effort.

“The postwar period is the time of our greatest opportunity. The United States will probably have some of its greatest influence with an allied group--Arab and European--that can take action not possible in the past--in a time frame when the Soviet Union is still an ally,” said Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who is organizing the briefings.

“If we win the war and not the peace, then the war will not have been worth the price,” Hoyer said.

A ranking Administration official called the criticism “silly,” noting that “Baker asked those questions because those are the issues we’re working on.”

“And we do have some ideas,” the Administration official said. “In some cases, we don’t have answers. In some, we’re in the midst. In some, we’re consulting with a wider range of people. In others, it’s still premature because we don’t have the facts. Remember, until three weeks ago, we’d didn’t know whether we’d have a war.

“I am confident that we will be able to cope with the postwar situation,” he continued. “Whether it succeeds is another question.”

Another key insider conceded: “They’re the right questions, it’s true. But we’re not ready to answer them. It’s going to take time to answer many of them. Some may never get answered.”

On the eve of an increasingly likely ground war, however, Mideast analysts suggested that time for answering fundamental policy issues is beginning to run short for the Administration.

“At this rate, the ground war is going to be over before we’ve figured out what to do next,” said a prominent U.S. expert. He compared the process to the laborious six-month policy review following President Bush’s inauguration that yielded few changes from foreign policy under the Reagan Administration.

While official answers on postwar strategy may remain distant, private experts and institutions have been suggesting a number of specific new approaches to the region’s longstanding problems.

One proposal winning considerable support would involve creation of a regional organization, modeled on the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to serve as a collective forum for mediation of all major issues.

“What you have to avoid is narrow bilateral negotiations. A broad format avoids getting bogged down in a single question, such as the Palestinians. The very dynamic of making progress on some issues will spill over beneficially on other issues,” said Augustus Richard Norton, director of a new program on Middle East security at the International Peace Academy.

“If (future) negotiations are to avoid a stalemate, past experience in the region would indicate that it’s important to develop a range of confidence-building measures to directly address the fears and apprehensions of the states involved,” Norton said.

A new regional body--bringing together Arabs, Israelis and possibly Iran--would offer an umbrella approach to the volatile issues of postwar security, the Palestinian problem, economic stabilization and arms control.

It also would offer a forum for longer-term issues, such as the region’s critical water shortages, a regional job market, human rights violations and refugees.

“There is an interrelatedness to issues in the region. Efforts should be made on the regional level to address simultaneously a number of major issues,” said Michael Hudson, Middle East specialist at Georgetown University.

“To have a general conference in the Mideast quadrant of the new world order dealing with region-wide arms control . . . requires countries to sit around the same table together,” he said. “If there is to be genuine security, it will have to be done by the states in the region.”

On arms control, U.S. analysts are urging a combined effort by the Mideast’s major weapons suppliers to monitor, or even ban, further sales to the region. One model under consideration is the Paris-based COCOM (Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls), a Western-allied body that has reviewed and restricted arms and technology exports to the one-time Communist Bloc.

“In the postwar environment, it’s hard to imagine that Mideast countries won’t be doing everything they can to arm themselves to the teeth. Everyone will be trying for deterrence in favor of themselves,” Hudson said.

“So the threat actually grows. One has to hope for a general agreement on the sale or export of weapons.”

Added Kipper: “Arms control has to begin with the suppliers. The United States has to set a precedent and get together with others--including the Soviets, China, France--to have no arms sales for three to six months while other things are accomplished.”

Because no Mideast country is ready to halt proliferation voluntarily, she said, “it has to be imposed.”