Iraq ‘No-Fly’ Zone Could Start Today, White House Says : Persian Gulf: Bush will announce its launch in a news conference designed to ‘explain it to the American people.’

As President Bush wound up a post-convention campaign trip, the White House signaled Sunday that he will soon turn his sights back to Iraq, where U.S. and allied forces are braced to impose new strictures that could lead to a military clash.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that Bush could set in motion as early as today action by the United States, Britain and France to establish a “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq prohibiting operations by Iraqi aircraft.

The United Nations-authorized move, which has been expected, has been justified by the Administration as an effort to protect Shiite insurgents in the region from repression by Iraqi forces.

But it also marks a sharp challenge to Baghdad by further limiting the governing regime’s authority even within Iraqi borders. Allied warplanes are to be authorized to shoot down any Iraqi aircraft that violate the prohibition, creating what could serve as a flash point for military tensions.

Iraq’s army newspaper on Sunday warned the West against ordering the air patrols and said “invaders” would find a watery grave in the marshes below, the Associated Press reported.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to be “aware of their national and patriotic responsibilities” and protect the nation against those who wish “evil for the country,” said the official Iraqi News Agency, monitored in Cyprus.

Al Qaddissiya, Iraq’s Defense Ministry daily, described Bush as a “cursed criminal,” British Prime Minister John Major as “worthless” and French President Francois Mitterrand as “the mean old man.”

“The aggressors have no one but themselves to blame,” the newspaper said. “We will tear them to pieces . . . and the marshes will be the graveyards to the invaders.”

With the three nations having agreed over the weekend to final details of the joint operation, Fitzwater said that Bush will announce its launch in a news conference designed to “explain it to the American people.”

Bush has insisted repeatedly that he would not allow political considerations to motivate his conduct of foreign policy. But at minimum, the intensification of military pressure on Iraq will allow the President to emphasize a commander in chief’s role that polls have shown to carry powerful political weight.

A Washington Post poll conducted over the weekend showed that 69% of American voters agreed that Bush could be trusted in a crisis. By contrast, only 44% of them voiced the same confidence in Clinton--a gap that Bush and his campaign sought once again Sunday to exploit.

Speaking to a campaign rally at the Illinois State Fair, Bush reminded several thousand cheering supporters gathered in a livestock exhibition hall that he had already made “the toughest decision that a President can make” when he ordered U.S. forces into Iraq.

As ceiling fans whirred high overhead in the steamy coliseum, Bush portrayed Democrat Bill Clinton by contrast as a “rubber-stamp President that will rubber-stamp this spendthrift Congress.

“So there,” he added. “We’re not going to let that nightmare happen.”

Bush made no mention of the impending Iraq crackdown during his 13-minute campaign-style address or during a meeting with farm families that preceded it. But Fitzwater said that Bush intends this week to offer “a public explanation of the action that the allies have taken and why.”

The President had seemed braced a week ago to use the impending confrontation with Iraq as a backdrop to the Republican Convention. But the Administration appeared to slow the timetable of its pressure campaign after news accounts quoted U.S. officials who suggested that the operation might be politically motivated.

Even while escalating pressure against Hussein, however, Bush is expected to spend most of the week on the campaign trail in an effort to maintain the momentum he gathered from last week’s convention.

A boost to that bid is expected to come from the 1992 debut of James A. Baker III and a new team of advisers who on Sunday formally took charge of White House operations to help coordinate a final pre-election blitz.

Baker, who resigned his post as secretary of state to return to Bush’s side, was formally sworn into office Sunday afternoon as White House chief of staff by an office administrator.

And in a frenzy of office-moving, Baker and his closest aides shifted their operations from the seventh floor of the State Department to the White House West Wing suites that had been occupied by outgoing Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner and his lieutenants.

In consolidating his hold on the White House and the Bush campaign, Baker is expected to take charge of the daily early-morning meetings between senior staff members from the two operations.

But Fitzwater stressed that Baker, whose appointment was used as a signal of Bush’s commitment to a domestic agenda, also will devote a considerable amount of his time to developing “issues and policies” for a second Bush term.

Among the foreign policy advisers now at the head of the White House operation are Robert B. Zoellick, who replaces W. Henson Moore as deputy chief of staff; Margaret Tutwiler, who becomes director of communications; Dennis Ross, who as assistant to the president for policy-planning supplants Clayton K. Yeutter as Bush’s top domestic adviser, and Janet Mullins, who takes charge of White House political operations.

The extent of the White House shake-up has stirred apprehension at the Bush campaign headquarters several blocks away that their operation might become the next target of a Baker-led putsch.

The former secretary of state already has turned to former aides like Mitchell Daniels, an Indiana executive, whom he enlisted to oversee Bush campaign advertising efforts. Other longtime Baker loyalists such as James Cicconi, the campaign’s issues director, are expected to play elevated roles.