Hussein Unlikely to Hold Power for Long, Bush Says : Persian Gulf: White House does not rule out military action against Iraqi helicopters being used to fight rebels. United Nations nears accord on harsh cease-fire terms.

With the U.N. Security Council nearing agreement on cease-fire terms that will impose harsh restrictions on Iraq’s military and economic future, President Bush said Wednesday it appears increasingly unlikely that Saddam Hussein can maintain his hold on power much longer.

“There’s enough dissent and disorder that it appears that Iraqi citizens are trying to do something about this,” Bush said. “We’ll wait and see how it plays out, but I think we’d have to put him down as fairly doubtful at this point.”

Bush also said he has not ruled out U.S. military action against combat helicopters used by Hussein’s forces to put down rebellions north and south of Baghdad. On Tuesday, the White House issued a statement saying that the helicopters will not be shot down as long as they do not threaten American or allied forces.

The President’s comments, made to reporters as he was about to leave Bethesda Naval Medical Center after undergoing his annual physical examination, underlined continuing ambiguity in the Administration’s attitude toward postwar Iraq. As spelled out by Bush and other officials, U.S. policy advocates the seemingly contradictory objectives of ousting Hussein while preserving Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity.

State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are nearing agreement on a complex resolution setting the terms for a permanent cease-fire between Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition.

Although Tutwiler declined to spell out the details, U.N. sources said the 20-page measure will require supervised destruction of Iraq’s nuclear material, chemical weapons and missile technology. It also will impose a permanent conventional arms embargo and require payment of war reparations that will soak up much of Iraq’s oil revenue for years to come.

Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdul Amir Anbari, said the resolution is “very unfair and goes far beyond any objectives set by any resolution of the Security Council. It penalizes not only the present generation of Iraq but future generations.”

He refused to say whether Iraq will comply.

Reading from a statement prepared in advance, Tutwiler said Iraq has no real choice but to accept the terms.

“Iraq refused to accept 12 other resolutions and has paid a very significant price for that,” Tutwiler said. “Some day, the Iraqi leadership will learn to respect the will and the mandate of the United Nations and the international community. It would be the position of the United States that this resolution, if adopted, should be implemented, regardless of whether Iraq accepts it or not.”

The cease-fire terms are clearly intended to prevent Iraq from threatening its neighbors again for decades to come, regardless of whether Hussein remains in power. The harsh resolution also may put additional pressure on Hussein by persuading his allies in the military and ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party that he has become too much of a liability to be allowed to survive.

“That set of conditions is a fairly reasonable one from the U.S. and the U.N. perspective,” said George Carver, a former deputy director of the CIA. “They ought to make Hussein take it or leave it. It will be very hard for him to take it (because of the humiliating terms). That will increase the incentive to others to force him out and take it.”

For weeks, U.S. officials have been predicting that Hussein ultimately will fall to a coup within his own party or military structure.

But on Wednesday, Bush said the insurrections are symptoms of Hussein’s unpopularity.

“People are fed up with him and see him for the brutal dictator he is,” Bush said. “They see him as one who tortured his own people. They see him as one that took his country into a war that was devastating for them.”

The President said the Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebellions have deep roots in sectarian conflicts that predate Hussein’s tenure. But, he asserted, “this turmoil is not completely historic unrest. It’s historic unrest plus great dissatisfaction with Saddam Hussein.”

Nevertheless, U.S. officials said Washington will not provide overt assistance to the rebels. Nongovernment specialists said the Administration is immobilized by a determination to avoid being seen as dictating the makeup of Iraq’s postwar government.

“The insurgents say that the United States ought to support them because the alternative is Saddam or son-of-Saddam,” said Richard W. Murphy, former assistant secretary of state for the Near East. “That is a very seductive pitch. But our response is limited. While anything is better than Saddam, the destruction of Iraq is not better.”

Murphy, now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said the U.N. resolution ultimately will take its toll on Hussein’s regime. But he said the impact will not be felt soon enough to prevent Hussein from crushing the rebels.

“Right now, Saddam is going to kill to stay on top,” he said.

No matter who governs Iraq in the future, Middle East experts said, the regime will no longer threaten the region. At the same time, most of these experts agreed, Iraq has been able to salvage enough of its prewar military might to defend itself against most likely threats.

“Even after losing half of its equipment, it still has more conventional weapons than any other Arab country, with the possible exception of Egypt,” said Trevor N. Dupuy, a military scholar and former U.S. Army colonel. “It will be in a position to defend itself if it regains unity and national cohesion.”

He said Iraq’s proven oil reserves will permit the country to survive economically even if it must make tens of billions of dollars in war reparations.

Times staff writer John Goldman at the United Nations contributed to this report.