Iraq Misses U.N. Deadline on Nuclear Weapons Data

Iraq failed to comply Thursday with a deadline set by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to present a final inventory of its weapons of mass destruction.

But Western allies preferred for the time being a strategy of steady pressure to squeeze President Saddam Hussein for more disclosures. Diplomats said their eventual response will depend largely on what information a new team of U.N. nuclear inspectors receives when it reaches Baghdad in the next few days.

At both the White House and the United Nations, where Security Council members began complicated consultations over allowing a possible sale of oil by Iraq for its humanitarian needs, officials stressed that no military action was imminent--although a resumption of bombing was not ruled out in the long run.

Nonetheless, thousands of Iraqis, fearful of renewed bombing, fled to nearby Jordan, and others stocked additional supplies of food and gasoline in the time remaining before the Thursday deadline.

As was true during the war, antiaircraft guns were placed atop government buildings, and key defense operations were moved to civilian neighborhoods, wire services reported from the Iraqi capital.

A Bush Administration spokesman accused Iraq of playing a “shell game” with nuclear equipment. At the United Nations, British Ambassador David Hannay agreed with Washington’s harsh assessment.

“July 25, today, was not a deadline for military action,” said Deputy White House Press Secretary Roman Popadiuk--a message that already had been delivered publicly and privately to Iraq’s representatives at the United Nations.

“We are considering where to go from here,” Hannay said. “One way or another, Iraq’s nuclear program is going to be dismantled.”

In Vienna, U.N. inspectors seeking to scrutinize Iraq’s nuclear weapons capabilities said Thursday that they still are not convinced that Hussein has made public his full nuclear program.

“As regards results, we cannot say whether we have seen all,” Hans Blix, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a news conference. “There may be more to declare--especially, the inspectors feel, in the field of centrifuge enrichment.”

The fourth IAEA team of investigators departed for Iraq on Thursday. Previous teams visited more than 30 sites.

“The IAEA considers that unfortunately the Iraqi government has not revealed all it has as far as its nuclear capabilities are concerned,” U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar told reporters as he emerged from the Security Council’s consultations over whether to permit Iraq to sell oil.

“But I don’t have the impression that we are now under an ultimatum,” Perez de Cuellar said. “ . . . I am not particularly concerned because I don’t think that the government of the United States is prepared now to attack again the Iraqi territory together with its allies. Nothing in the statements I have heard indicate that they are about to start tomorrow any military action.”

White House officials also indicated that the United States is not yet prepared to retaliate with military force.

Instead, they suggested, the Administration is likely to postpone any decision until it learns whether Iraq is going to provide unfettered access to inspection teams.

But officials refused to rule out any future strike, stressing that the ultimatum that expired Thursday was significant only as a marker to determine whether Iraq is operating in good faith.

In shifting the focus to the question of how Saddam Hussein will react to the new inspections, Popadiuk declared:

“We hope that he’ll comply fully and let those inspectors go in. . . . It’ll be for the benefit of everyone for him to do that.”

Administration officials nevertheless remained emphatic in their view that Iraq’s leader has been less than candid in the accountings provided to the United Nations of his weapons of mass destruction.

“To this moment, as far as I am aware, Iraq has not fully complied,” Popadiuk said Thursday morning in an assessment that, according to officials, remained unchanged by day’s end. “In terms of nuclear weapons, I think it’s been quite obvious over the past two or three weeks that they’ve been playing a shell game with their equipment.”

One U.N. inspection team was turned away several weeks ago from a suspected nuclear facility when Iraqi soldiers fired shots in the air. The team later reported that Iraqi officials appeared to have removed nuclear equipment from the site before permitting the inspection to continue.

At the Pentagon, officials continued to declare their readiness to resume military strikes against Iraq if it holds out on the terms of the cease-fire ending the war, under which Iraq is required to disclose all of its major weaponry.

“We’ve given very clear markers to the Iraqis,” said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams. “We continue to be prepared to undertake military action if we get that order. We have not gotten such an order. However, we also believe that Iraq has continued to fail to comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

At the same time, Pentagon officials outlined the final details of a predominantly American force to deter attacks by the Iraqi government on the minority Kurds of northern Iraq, who failed in an anti-Baghdad uprising in the spring.

But although the multinational force is expected to be ready to launch combat missions from its bases in Turkey, Williams acknowledged that there is no agreement among cooperating nations on how and when the force would be sent into Iraq.

“There is no question about the ability to use the force, but some of the formal arrangements are still being worked out,” he said.

The combined task force, based in Silopi, will include 5,000 troops from six nations, including 1,500 U.S. ground forces, Williams said. Its headquarters and air component--which is expected to continue air reconnaissance missions indefinitely over Iraq--will be based at a Turkish air base at Incirlik.

The ground component will consist of a headquarters company, an infantry unit, an attack helicopter unit, an airlift unit and a logistics support unit. The nations participating in the ground component are the United States, Turkey, Britain, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

The newly formed force is to be commanded by U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. James L. Jamerson, who will replace U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John M. Shalikashvili.

Times staff writers Melissa Healy and Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this article.