NEWS ANALYSIS : Hussein, the Alley Brawler, Is Swinging Wildly Once Again : Iraq: His rejection of U.N. directives appears to be a struggle for personal survival.

Throttled by the outside world and isolated in power within Iraq, President Saddam Hussein once again is swinging wildly, an instinctive alley brawler.

No clever, calculating leader would thrust his chin out against powerful enemies who whipped him seven months ago and want him to stay on the deck. But Hussein seems incapable of reading the score card.

Though cloaked in calls for national pride and sovereignty, his rejection of the United Nations insistence that he bare his weapons programs and abide by the Gulf War cease-fire resolution appears, instead, a struggle for personal survival. For now his position seems secure. But his image--the Arab knight, strongman of the Middle East--is fading like a yellowed poster for a long-gone main event.

But still his Baghdad regime is throwing punches:

* In Paris, the Sunday editions of Le Figaro carried an interview with Hussein’s tough Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan rejecting the U.N. plan to handle a $1.6-billion sale of Baghdad’s oil and distribute part of the proceeds in aid to ill and hungry Iraqis in the country’s war-devastated cities and villages. In the first official Iraqi comment on the plan adopted last week by the Security Council, Ramadan said, “We would rather die than become beggars.” He termed the plan “shameful.”

* Monday, in the latest obstruction of U.N. teams inspecting weapons capabilities, soldiers in Baghdad blocked removal of documents that U.N. and American officials said provide proof that the Iraqi military was developing nuclear weapons. Last week the regime prevented helicopter flights by inspectors seeking secreted evidence of major weapons systems.

Intimidation is reflexive in Hussein’s regime. He rose in stature through fear as he consolidated power in the 1970s, jailing or eliminating political opponents at home and terrorizing enemies abroad with lethal operatives. In the 1980s, his revolutionary Arab Baath Socialist Party regime emerged from the brutal war with Iran as the pre-eminent Arab military power. The Arab world called him Saddam, and that was enough to evoke a chilling respect.

The 54-year-old, peasant-born revolutionary, however, wanted more than frightened obedience from the Iraqis. He wanted real political support, and he bought a share with lavish spending on roads and bridges, schools and buildings.

And there were the monuments: the raised swords over a military parade ground, held in brawny forearms reputedly modeled on Hussein’s own; the three-story statue of the leader in uniform, pistol at his hip. And there were the portraits: Saddam the general, the businessman, the avuncular friend of the Kurds. And Saddam the Arab leader, resplendent in the gold-trimmed, dark robes of a desert sheik.

Whatever political analysts made of Hussein’s real power with his postwar army of 1 million, his threat to “burn half of Israel” with chemical weapons and the shivers he was sending down the oil coast of the Persian Gulf, the bizarre personality cult he built in Baghdad indicated a man less than secure despite his successes.

Hussein came to power in a bloody revolution in 1968, first as security czar and a decade later in the presidency. No meaningful elections have been held under Arab Baath Socialist Party rule, and the revolutionary vanguard was and increasingly is composed of Hussein’s relatives and townsmen from the city of Tikrit north of Baghdad. At the pinnacle of power is the Revolutionary Command Council, headed by Hussein, which rules by fiat.

If the men of the council thought the country was behind them, the violent aftermath of the Gulf War proved otherwise, when Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north rose in rebellion against a weakened Hussein. Their targets were the leadership, the party; in the south, particularly, their rejection was written in blood.

“A Baathist identity card was enough to get a person killed, whether he was Shiite, Kurd or Sunni,” Naji Jawad, chairman of Baghdad University’s international relations department, told Palestinian reporter Lamis Andoni. “This has alarmed party members (into thinking) that their fate is linked, maybe more than ever, with the continuation of the regime.”

And if the 1.5 million Arab Baath Socialist Party members among an Iraqi population of 18 million think there is safety in clinging together, the tight group at the top also knows that, if Hussein falls, they all do. Their fates are intertwined with a man who knows only one way--his.

Those who don’t get along are gone. Sadoun Hammadi, a Shiite but a revolutionary comrade of the president, was named prime minister in the wake of Gulf War defeat and charged with getting the country on its feet. Two weeks ago, he was dumped and replaced by a nonentity, Mohammed Hamza Zubaidi, who, unlike Hammadi, is not expected to offer new ideas. The command council has become Saddam Hussein and four or five suits, fatigue suits in this case.

Sunday’s Baghdad dailies carried a photo of the security leaders meeting to discuss President Bush’s warning that U.S. air power might protect the U.N. inspection helicopters if Baghdad continued to refuse free passage. The defense minister and interior minister, Hussein Kamel Hassan and Ali Hassan Majid, were on hand, both family. The rest were Tikritis or old revolutionary comrades.

None would offer any threat to Hussein’s power, because his demise could unravel the whole fabric of party rule. Its original ideology--secular, socialist, a modern framework for Arab states--has long been replaced by a presidential autocracy.

Hussein has held on for more than two decades, a long run for a non-hereditary Arab ruler. And he has done it with raw power. Hussein never steps back unless faced with clearly superior force, and then he makes his move only at the last minute--too late in the case of Desert Storm.

Now he is in his toughest fight. The Iraqis are bitter and desperate. Postwar inflation has shriveled their buying power. Middle-class families can afford meat only once a week.

The rich and the connected, a small and privileged class, are pampered by the beleaguered president. They include the top ranks of the party, security services and the military--Hussein’s muscle.

Ten days ago, the army newspaper Qadissiyah spread news of their value: They will receive interest-free loans to weather the hard times, the daily reported. “This new gift from our leader President Saddam Hussein to his sons in the brave army is not the first and definitely not the last.”

Hussein will be generous with his protectors, if he follows pattern, and he will show no weakness to the Iraqi masses. “We look at victory in its perspective as a historical duel, not as a fight between one army and several others,” he recently told some visitors from Tikrit. “You are victorious because you have refused humiliation and suppression.”

Some analysts argue that it is not humiliation but suppression that Hussein fears from the dogged U.N. campaign to ferret out and destroy the weapons that made him a titan among the Arabs. If he loses them all, they say, he loses respect.

The loss of face is the loss of power in this part of the world.