Iraq Confronts U.N. on Sanctions : Diplomacy: Hussein envoy calls for a bargaining session on compliance with resolutions. Baghdad’s defiance raises the specter of new allied action.

Brushing aside somber warnings that Saddam Hussein must not miscalculate the mood of the United Nations again, Tarik Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, led Iraq into a new confrontation with the Security Council on Wednesday, failing to satisfy demands for his nation’s full compliance with the resolutions ending the Gulf War.

Instead, Aziz called for a mammoth, future bargaining session of the council to iron out the charges that Iraq is defying the United Nations.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering quickly denounced that proposal, telling reporters that Aziz’s council speech was “a lamentable performance” that amounted to an attempt “to open the door to renegotiating the resolutions. It was a long scream designed to throw dust over the whole affair.”

Pickering later told the council that Aziz had “repeated the old and tired arguments of the past.”

The stubbornness of Aziz--unless it weakens when the extraordinary open session of the council resumes today--raised the specter of a new, though undefined punitive action by the United States and its Gulf War allies.

At the White House, President Bush said of the Iraqis: “If they don’t comply, we will contemplate all alternatives.”

At the United Nations, British Ambassador David Hannay lectured Aziz: “A year ago Iraq was expelled from Kuwait by force of arms under the authority of the United Nations. The use of force was required because Iraq miscalculated and believed that this council was bluffing. . . . There is an opportunity again now for Iraq to comply. I hope she will not again miscalculate.”

At issue are a host of accusations that Iraq is trying to evade the provisions of council resolutions, especially those requiring the elimination of all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Aziz asked for the public session last month after the council denounced Iraq for refusing to allow the destruction of machinery and equipment used to manufacture ballistic missiles.

“An unfortunate pattern has developed,” Pickering told the council. “Iraq makes declarations of minimal content, declarations which are clearly meant to misinform, misdirect, and to conceal. . . . This is not compliance but hide and seek, cat and mouse, cheat and retreat.”

In a speech that gradually swelled with emotion, Aziz--the 54-year-old diplomat who has long served as Iraqi President Hussein’s envoy to the world--painted Iraq as a country suffering unfairly under unjust sanctions and capricious inspections that continually trod upon its sovereignty and security.

“The question constantly asked by 18 million Iraqis, together with millions more of honest free people in the world, is: For how long will this iniquitous siege continue to be imposed upon Iraq?” Aziz asked. “Iraq is a country which has made an outstanding contribution to the establishment of human civilization.” Yet its people now are “prohibited from importing the chlorine it needs to sterilize its drinking water.”

The “people of Iraq, which has given the world, through a history of 6,000 years, philosophers, poets and men of letters, and which established the world’s earliest university, (are) being prevented today from importing all of (their) needs of educational materials and of the paper needed to print school textbooks and student notebooks.”

Aziz insisted that Iraq has already complied with “the fundamental contents” of the resolutions ending the Gulf War and that the Security Council, therefore, has an obligation to lift the sanctions.

“Iraq has been fulfilling its obligations month after month,” he said. “What obligations has the council, for its part, fulfilled toward the people of Iraq? The answer is: Nothing whatsoever.”

Obviously alluding to frequent statements from President Bush and British Prime Minister John Major that they would never allow the lifting of sanctions so long as Hussein remains in power, Aziz said certain countries have announced “that they would not be prepared to lift the economic embargo until the political leadership of Iraq was replaced.”

Aziz denounced this demand of Bush and Major as a “flagrant contradiction . . . with the contents of the resolutions issued by the council itself.”

With this point, Aziz did touch a chord within the council, for many agree that the lifting of sanctions should not depend on Hussein’s removal. French Ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee, for example, told Aziz that “the only way to achieve your objective of lifting sanctions is to conform fully and unconditionally to the obligations” of the resolutions.

Aziz accused some inspectors of the U.N. Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency of serving countries trying to harm Iraq.

For that reason, Aziz said he proposed a special conference of the Security Council, in which both the Special Commission and the Iraqi government would submit lists of weapons and materials that they believe should be destroyed under the resolutions. The council, under the Aziz plan, would then negotiate and arbitrate until a final list was worked out.

This was obviously unacceptable to the council since it amounted to a complete undercutting of the Special Commission set up to supervise the destruction of Iraqi weapons.

At several moments in his speech, Aziz insisted that Iraq was willing to conform with all the resolutions of the council, consistent with “its sovereignty and dignity and of non-infringement upon its national security.”

But this condition troubled council members, especially when Aziz, for the first time, pledged that Iraq would conform with the resolution authorizing ongoing inspections of Iraq even after all its weapons programs had been destroyed. But this pledge was couched in vague terminology that indicated Iraq would limit the extent of such inspections.

Aziz did not reply to any of the accusations about the Iraqi government’s repression of Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south and its blockade of the north.

Citing a recent U.N. report on human rights in Iraq, Hannay said: “The contents of this report are truly horrifying and reveal very clearly that Iraq is in serious breach of its human rights obligations.”

The council impasse raised questions as to whether the Bush Administration was planning some kind of military strike against Iraq.

Asked in Washington whether American forces were prepared and able for military action in the Gulf, Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. military operations in that region, replied: “I think it’s fair to say that we are doing the kind of planning that’s prudent at this point.”

More than 100 U.S. warplanes remain in Saudi Arabia, and two Navy aircraft carriers remain within striking distance of Iraq.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this report.