Iraqi Nuclear Sites Fair Game, Bush Believes

President Bush believes he has full authority from the U.N. Security Council to use military force against Iraq in the wake of Iraq’s continuing refusal to allow U.N. inspectors to freely examine suspected nuclear weapons equipment and facilities, a senior Administration official said Thursday.

The Administration is pressing for a meeting of the Security Council, however, and hopes Iraq’s recalcitrance will help the United States muster a show of unity--and diplomatic support for future action--similar to the cooperation and coordination that preceded Operation Desert Storm.

Asked as he was about to board Air Force One in Springfield, Mo., if he is going to “get tough” at the Security Council, Bush replied, “Yup.”

Why?

“The guy’s lying,” he said, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Brent Scowcroft, the President’s national security adviser, added: “Iraq is trying to get away with something.” Asked if the Iraqi defiance is indeed serious, he paused and then nodded his head “yes” several times.

The ongoing dispute with Hussein over Iraq’s suspected nuclear sites has proven to be an embarrassing development for the Administration, particularly on the Fourth of July--the day Bush singled out in March, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, as a special holiday for the U.S. troops who had been deployed in the Saudi desert for half a year leading up to the war.

Indeed, the Administration has called little attention to the holiday, as the unfinished business of the war--the apparently incomplete destruction of Hussein’s arsenal and the still-doubtful resolution of Hussein’s treatment of the Kurdish minority--drags on. Administration officials, from Bush on down, drop hints that additional military action may yet be undertaken.

In a reference Thursday to the Gulf War veterans, Bush saluted “the brave servicemen and women of Operation Desert Storm.”

“While standing strong for American values, they liberated a nation abroad, a tiny nation halfway around the world, and transformed a nation at home,” said Bush, standing in front of a gazebo on the town square in front of the Webster County Courthouse. Earlier, he marched briefly in the annual Independence Day parade down sun-drenched Clay street in this small town in the Missouri Ozarks.

“These young men and women went to the desert and brought honor to our nation, just as all veterans have done before them,” he said, before flying to Grand Rapids, Mich., for another parade at the end of a two-day holiday trip that began Wednesday at Mt. Rushmore, S.D.

The senior official, looking ahead to an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, said the Administration feels “we don’t need a resolution on the use of force,” because the council’s Resolution 678, passed in the days of intense diplomacy leading up to the outbreak of the war, authorizes the use of “all necessary means” against Iraq.

That resolution was directed primarily at ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, although Bush’s aims at the time included the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities in an effort to restore stability to the region.

Under the agreement between Iraq and the United Nations that brought a cease-fire to the Gulf, Iraq was to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile systems. It was also required to take a series of steps intended to eliminate the equipment and facilities believed by the United States to be part of a program intended to produce nuclear weapons. These unconventional weapons systems were among the first targets of U.S. bombers when the war began Jan. 17.

The cease-fire agreement called for Iraq to list the locations of all “nuclear weapons-usable” materials and then allow the United Nations to inspect such material to ensure that it was being destroyed.

Last Friday, Iraqi forces fired warning shots over the heads of a U.N. inspection team. Nevertheless, inspectors managed to photograph the removal by a back exit of what was said to be nuclear equipment.

A new U.N. team was expected to return today to Iraq to inspect another site, said the senior Administration official.

Among the concerns of U.S. officials is that as time goes by, the Iraqi nuclear material is becoming more difficult to track.

“They continue to find new ways to hide it,” including dividing the suspect material and machinery into smaller packages and dispersing them, another senior Administration official said.

“There are advantages to keeping it intact,” both for monitoring the contraband and for preparing contingency plans for destroying it, he said. “It’s a fairly legitimate concern. The longer it goes on, the harder it is” to keep track of the material.

The Administration has made it clear that it considers the use of military force against Iraq to be one of its options. But it is also stressing that, at least in the near term, it is working quietly and behind the scenes to sound out its Gulf War allies to determine whether there is support for such a step.

On Monday, Bush said that speculation about military action is “not all warrantless”--reflecting the effort to keep up pressure on Hussein through veiled threats.

But, he said, “I’m very interested in getting the views of other world leaders, and the diplomacy leading up to that has already started.”

One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested there is support within the Administration for what is becoming known as “Gulf-2” if Hussein stonewalls on allowing full inspections.

He said the strategy is identical to Operation Desert Shield, the period that led up to the war, which was code-named Operation Desert Storm. Under this program, every effort would be made to gather pledges of cooperation, followed by mobilization of the international community--the coalition that supported the war against Iraq--through active telephone diplomacy by Bush.

Concurrently, efforts will be made to gain support for another formal U.N. Security Council resolution, the U.S. official said, despite the assertion that if it wants to act, the United States believes that renewed military operations would be covered by Resolution 678.

After an “acceptable” period, the United States would bomb nuclear sites, storage facilities and remaining chemical or biological warehouses that might have been discovered since the war ended, the official said.

The official noted that in any case there is pressure on the United States to resolve the problem--through diplomacy, threat, or military action--before the remaining U.S. troops and aircraft are sent home. Of the more than 540,000 troops deployed in the Gulf at the height of the war, approximately 50,000 remain.

He said the Administration does not have the luxury of months of preparation that led up to Desert Storm.

A U.S. military official said he “sensed” a strong appetite to charge ahead and complete the war’s “unfinished business” among Administration officials who are chagrined about having turned out to be wrong in their initial war-time claims that all of Iraq’s nuclear sites were eliminated.

He said the Administration may be approaching the last opportunity to eliminate any potential threat from Iraq’s remaining weapons, adding that it would be much more difficult, militarily or diplomatically, to hit Iraq again in six months or a year.

He said information provided by a recent Iraqi defector was very specific and offered signposts for possible hiding places that U.S. or coalition warplanes could target.

He also speculated that the United States would use the opportunity to hit anything else it wanted, although Hussein himself would not be a target unless, as the official said, he turns out to be in the wrong place at the right time.

Times staff writers Robin Wright and John M. Broder, in Washington, contributed to this report.