No Deadline on Iraqi Missiles, U.N. Chief Says : Gulf: But Baghdad’s defiance of council resolutions appears headed for another tense chapter.

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali denied Thursday that the United Nations has set any deadline for Iraq to destroy its ballistic missile factories or face punitive action. But his remarks did not slow down planning at the Pentagon for a possible air and missile strike.

“There is no deadline,” Boutros-Ghali said in his first news conference since taking his post on Jan. 1. “. . . I believe that there is no time frame.”

Despite this evident attempt to defuse rhetoric, the saga of Iraqi defiance of U.N. resolutions appeared headed for another tense chapter next week as inspectors test whether the government of Saddam Hussein will give in to the demands for destruction of its machinery and equipment to build and transform missiles.

Rolf Ekeus, a Swedish diplomat who heads the U.N. Special Commission charged with the elimination of Iraq’s most lethal weapons programs, told journalists that his team of inspectors will arrive in Baghdad on Saturday and remain in Iraq until March 29.

This would be the first arrival of inspectors since Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz met with the Security Council in two days of an unusual open session last week. Aziz, while challenging the fairness and legitimacy of many resolutions, insisted that his government intends to cooperate with the United Nations.

Ekeus said he told Iraqi technicians last weekend that the inspectors intended to supervise the destruction of some equipment and to await a plan from the Iraqis for the destruction of the rest.

Asked if this amounts to a deadline, Ekeus replied, “Take it as you like.” But he added that, based on his conversations with the Iraqis, “we take it that destruction would take place.” Other diplomats said Ekeus reported to the Security Council that he had received such promises from the Iraqis.

Ekeus refused to say what he would do if his team came out of Iraq empty-handed. “It’s a little early to talk about contingencies,” he said.

In Washington, however, there was a good deal of talk about contingencies as the Bush Administration intensified a war of nerves against Hussein, implicitly threatening him with an air strike if he continued to refuse to comply with the U.N. resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.

A senior military official, while stressing that President Bush has not authorized an attack, said that plans for potential renewed action in Iraq are “advanced.”

An Air Force spokeswoman in Germany said that F-4 Phantoms from the 52nd Tactical Fighter Wing based at Spangdahlem Air Base are being redeployed to undisclosed locations in the Persian Gulf region.

She said that the aircraft are assigned to replace other warplanes now in the region, but she did not specify what other units would be leaving the Gulf or when.

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams declined to discuss military planning but added: “We have said since the end of the war that we’ve always had military options, that all options are open. That has been the case since the end of the (Desert Storm) operation. It’s still the case today.”

Williams said that the Navy has 34 ships in the region, including the aircraft carrier America stationed inside the Persian Gulf. Several of the ships are capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Air Force has more than 100 warplanes in the theater, he said, including F-117 fighter-bombers and a variety of ground-attack, electronic-warfare and aerial-refueling planes. B-52s based in England and in the United States are also capable of hitting targets in Iraq, officials said.

Williams denied that the Administration is engaged in an “orchestrated campaign,” threatening military action to intimidate Hussein into complying with the U.N. cease-fire resolutions. “It’s sort of every man for himself right now, and I’m unaware of any propaganda campaign,” he said.

Yet several well-placed officials at the Pentagon and White House have engaged in what appears to be deliberate saber-rattling in the last several days, letting it be known that President Bush is determined to act militarily if Hussein continues to resist inspections.

The mood in Washington irritated many U.N. diplomats who believed that the Bush Administration is heightening tension by exaggerating the imminence of a deadline and conflict.

“All this talk about deadline is ridiculous, ridiculous,” said a European diplomat whose delegation sits on the Security Council.

Perhaps to assuage such discontent, U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering told reporters, “I’m not going to talk about deadlines. Iraq has already been found to be in serious breach of the resolutions. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough.”

Another potential difference between the United States and the United Nations looms on the question of punishment. Asked about the use of force against Iraq, Boutros-Ghali told his news conference, “The decision is to be taken by the Security Council.”

In Washington, however, White House officials suggested that the Administration would not be obliged to seek further authorization from the Security Council before launching a military strike against Iraq.

“The U.N. Security Council last week made unmistakably clear to Aziz that Iraq must comply with all relevant . . . Security Council resolutions, including the demand that weapons of mass destruction facilities be destroyed,” Deputy Press Secretary Gary Foster said at a White House briefing.

Some U.S. government legal specialists say the U.S. military could attack Iraq under the authority of previous U.N. resolutions.

Both Boutros-Ghali and the Security Council hailed a hopeful note in U.N.-Iraqi relations when Iraqi officials agreed to meet with Assistant Secretary General Giandomenico Picco in Vienna next Thursday to discuss the sale of Iraqi oil, mainly to get money for humanitarian needs.

The Security Council has authorized Iraq to sell oil worth $1.5 billion, provided that the United Nations collects the revenue to make sure that it is not diverted for Iraqi government use. But the Iraqis, protesting that this procedure would impinge on their sovereignty, broke off talks about the issue some time ago.