U.S. Begins Planning for Possible Clash With Iraq : Persian Gulf: Officials consider military or diplomatic help for Shiites, Kurds to weaken Hussein.

The White House said Tuesday that the belated U.N. inspection of Iraq’s Agriculture Ministry has defused an immediate confrontation with Baghdad, but senior officials said specific planning has begun for what they described as an all but inevitable clash in the future.

With Saddam Hussein’s armed suppression of Shiite Muslim populations now seen as one likely flash point, officials are reviewing proposals for a possible U.S. military response to serve as a first step toward breaking the Iraqi leader’s political hold on the country.

In particular, Administration officials are reviewing a plan to seek U.N. approval for the creation of a new protective zone in southern Iraq for the Shiites, who remain under attack in a comprehensive Iraqi military offensive.

In addition to providing refuge for the targeted population, the proposal was described by some officials as a means to embarrass Hussein and reduce the part of Iraq under his direct control.

Along with a potential military strike, other proposals under consideration by Administration strategists include exempting the Kurdish north from the economic sanctions now imposed upon the entire nation and pushing for a new U.N. resolution permitting the use of frozen Iraqi assets to pay for U.N. operations in the region.

The steps would be designed to strip President Hussein of control of two strategic oil centers in the north and south and to leave the Sunni Muslim heartland--his power base--impoverished and isolated from the rest of the country.

“We want to hurt him where he minds it the most--on the issue of sovereignty,” one Administration source said. “We want to reduce it down to where the Presidential Palace is the only place Saddam has sovereignty.”

Although the Administration has still not decided on a final course, ranking U.S. officials now appear to think military action is unavoidable. They said the Iraqi attacks on Shiite populations had been a major focus of top-level meetings in recent days between President Bush and his senior advisers.

The new planning came as Bush received vocal support Tuesday from congressional leaders to initiate military action against Iraq for its violations of U.N. resolutions if and when the Administration deems it necessary.

“I think it’s pretty predictable that it’s going to happen,” Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas said after a White House meeting. “‘We just don’t know when it’s going to happen.”

But Bush was said to have made clear in the session that any U.S. military moves would have limited goals. “Whose son do you want to go to Baghdad to try to find Saddam Hussein?” Bush asked at one point, according to Dole.

The hawkish stance of the Administration’s longer-term strategy is coupled with a clear attempt by the White House and top Bush lieutenants to signal that no military operation would be mounted without further provocation.

Even as television pictures showed an aircraft carrier steaming eastward across the Atlantic, Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater was emphasizing to reporters from a White House podium that the current crisis had been defused.

Pentagon officials later said that the carrier, the John F. Kennedy, would not sail on to the Mideast as previously planned but would remain in the western Atlantic.

On Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney warned that “people are ratcheting this up a little bit more than it deserves.” He told reporters that predictions of “some sort of imminent action” are mistaken.

At the same time, the White House made clear that Bush remained far from content with the U.N.-Iraqi compromise that had forced the reshuffling of a U.N. inspection team and delayed its search of Iraq’s Agriculture Ministry for more than three weeks.

As a new team began its inspection of the premises Tuesday morning, spokesman Fitzwater conceded that Hussein had “won” by barring Americans from the group. He noted also that Iraq had gained time to dispose of any weapons system documents hidden in the facility, and said sourly that the White House had little hope that the team would uncover anything of value.

Indeed, senior Administration officials said bluntly that the bitterness of the experience had left Bush and his top national security advisers determined not to allow Iraq to put the United States in a similar situation again.

They noted that Bush, in a campaign speech Monday, referred obliquely to “some decisions” he and his advisers had reached in a meeting at Camp David in Maryland over the weekend. While refusing to provide details, one official characterized the sentiment at that session as “never again.”

In describing planned U.S. efforts to test Iraq’s willingness to comply with the U.N. sanctions, Administration officials reiterated that the principal focus would be on access to suspected Iraqi weapons facilities provided to the U.N. inspectors.

Confirming that the United States hoped to see such searches become more frequent, the White House said that Washington and its allies hope to “force that issue at every opportunity.”

The Administration has suggested that Iraqi rejection of another inspection team could provoke a U.S. military response. Senior officials made clear, however, that Iraqi attacks on pockets of Shiite opposition in the south--the most serious since the Shiite uprising began there last year--had become an equally likely trigger for retaliation.

The White House has listed the attacks prominently among alleged Iraqi violations of U.N. resolutions, and Fitzwater said pointedly that the United States is watching the situation in the region “very closely.” Other officials said it was conceivable that Washington might attempt to shoot down Iraqi aircraft involved in the bombing attacks.

But several key Administration sources now believe that any military strike must be joined with new diplomatic and economic initiatives in what one official called a “full-court press against Iraq.”

Times staff writer Art Pine contributed to this article.

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