Iraq Balks Over U.N. Flights; U.S. Weighs 2nd Strike : Persian Gulf: Baghdad, under a Bush deadline, agrees to let inspectors’ planes land but says it cannot guarantee their safety. U.S. delays any immediate action.

The United States on Friday weighed a second air strike against Iraq--possibly this weekend--after Baghdad refused to guarantee the safety of U.N. inspection flights.

Senior Administration officials met late into the evening Friday over how to respond to the latest Iraqi provocation, ultimately deciding to delay action, perhaps until Sunday.

On Thursday, Iraq agreed to allow U.N. aircraft to land but said Friday it could not guarantee their safety.

In New York, Tim Trevan--a spokesman for the U.N. Special Commission, charged with conducting inspections of Iraq’s weapons program--said that without Iraqi guarantees, U.N. inspectors would not make the flights.

Trevan told a news conference that the commission effectively would give Baghdad a second chance to agree to accept a U.N. flight--and guarantee its safety--on Sunday. He said there was not enough time today to prepare for a second attempt to fly the inspectors from Bahrain.

Iraq’s refusal to guarantee the safety of U.N. aircraft was based on the contention that it could not do so as long as American and allied warplanes are patrolling over Iraqi territory in a situation that Baghdad says infringes on its sovereignty.

“Iraq affirms that it is not responsible for the safety of the planes inside Iraqi airspace in case of a mistake or a misunderstanding, God forbid,” Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf declared in Baghdad. “This is because all the barrels of guns in Iraq, even on the popular level, are aimed so as to defend Iraq’s skies and sovereignty.

“The U.S., British and French warplanes . . . are violating Iraqi airspace in an open aggression, which is not accepted by Iraq.”

“That was not the answer we were looking for,” a senior Pentagon official said of Iraq’s response on Friday.

Washington contends that allied warplanes are entitled to fly throughout the region and that Iraq must guarantee the safety of the aircraft carrying the U.N. weapons inspectors despite the warplanes’ presence.

The Pentagon official added that any second strike might well be more sweeping than last Wednesday’s limited attack. He said Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had argued for a broader air strike on Wednesday that would have attacked additional sites.

Some officials hinted that the United States may launch another strike even if Baghdad complies fully with U.N. demands, simply to hit some of the targets that were missed in Wednesday’s raid.

In other developments Friday:

* The first contingent of an expected 1,300 troops from Ft. Hood, Tex., arrived in Kuwait on Friday, prepared to back up 300 members of U.S. special forces units that already are there to help that country’s army patrol the Iraq-Kuwait border.

* U.S. military officials said Iraq on Friday had activated the radar on two of three SA-3 antiaircraft missiles that remain in its southern “no-fly zone,” despite allied orders that it dismantle the missile batteries. The weapons were left standing after Wednesday’s allied raid.

They also said an American pilot had reported that Iraq had fired antiaircraft guns at a U.S. F-111 fighter-bomber that was flying in the northern no-fly zone over territory inhabited by Kurdish rebels. The U.S. plane was unharmed. Iraq did not activate its radar in the north.

* Iraq said that its antiaircraft defenses in the southern no-fly zone had “forced” a hostile aircraft to flee, but Pentagon officials said they had no knowledge of any such incident.

* The leader of Iraq’s rebel Shiite Muslims said the air strike the United States and its allies mounted Wednesday had served only to bolster Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s position by turning more of the Iraqi population against the West. “This is what Saddam Hussein wants,” he said.

* Pentagon officials said a bomb that had missed its mark and appeared to have hit an apartment building actually struck a private house that was surrounded by farmland. Iraq said two Iraqi civilians died in the incident.

* A day after the Pentagon acknowledged that the allied planes missed most of their targets in Wednesday’s raid, Defense Department analysts said the success was inhibited by White House orders that the raid be conducted in a single pass at night, to minimize danger to pilots.

A New Deadline

Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger said late Friday that Iraq “did not meet the deadline” set by the United States and its allies for clearing U.N. flights to land. He said “the potential is there” for another allied air strike but declined to say what the allies ultimately might decide.

There was no immediate indication whether--or when--President Bush, who was in Camp David, Md., for the weekend, would order a second set of air strikes.

On Wednesday, the United States, Britain and France dispatched 110 warplanes to attack missile sites in Iraq.

But indications on Friday were that the U.S. response might not come until Sunday. Marlin Fitzwater, the White House press secretary, told reporters late Friday that the Iraqi response was “under review.”

The incident, the latest in three weeks of open Iraqi provocations and allied threats, underscored the refusal of Hussein to ease up with the approaching inauguration Wednesday of President-elect Bill Clinton.

The latest clash came early Friday, when Iraq refused to clear a U.N. inspection flight, despite pledges Thursday that it no longer would bar U.N. aircraft from landing. Bush immediately gave Iraq until 4 p.m. EST to reverse its stand or face a new allied attack.

“If flight clearance is not granted by 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, Iraq will be in noncompliance,” Bush told reporters just after 12:30 p.m. EST. “I think sufficient warnings have been granted and they know what they must do.”

Baghdad delivered its pledge of compliance half an hour before the expiration of the deadline but attached the offending caveat that it could not guarantee the safety of the U.N. aircraft. Administration officials were infuriated by the response.

In Little Rock, Ark., Clinton’s spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, said Clinton “fully supports” the President’s action. “If Saddam Hussein doesn’t comply, . . . he risks the consequences,” Stephanopoulos said.

U.S. Options

Military analysts speculated that if the United States and its allies launch another military strike, it probably would again be a limited, rather than massive, attack similar to last Wednesday’s sorties--primarily to minimize the danger to pilots.

“The Administration doesn’t want to be dealing with two celebrations next Wednesday--one to inaugurate Bill Clinton and (another) in Baghdad, where American POWs are paraded through the streets,” said Robert Gaskin, an analyst with Business Executives for National Security.

“Once they have a POW, you are in a completely reactive position,” said Gaskin, who himself is a former Air Force commander. “And if you’re in a political war like this, that’s the worst thing that can happen.”

Gaskin said this time the United States also might use unmanned Tomahawk cruise missiles from ships and submarines in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, along with long-range Slam missiles, which are launched and guided to their targets by Navy warplanes well out of harm’s way.

U.S. forces continued on high alert Friday. The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk remained in the Persian Gulf, with nearly 40 strike aircraft--and six other warships carrying more than 200 Tomahawk missiles--within range of anticipated Iraqi targets.

The Iraqi View

In Baghdad, Foreign Minister Sahaf’s statement was read out to journalists at the Information Ministry just before midnight as the tension mounted by the moment before the approaching deadline for another round of destruction.

Although Baghdad’s new policy permitted the U.N. flights “on a case-by-case basis,” Sahaf was deliberate in his rhetoric against the United States and its allies, stressing that Iraqi antiaircraft batteries will continue to fire as effectively as they can at any passing warplanes.

The regime, besides issuing various statements, also aired a television documentary asserting that Iraq had triumphed during the Gulf War. It sought to influence world opinion by taking journalists to sites of the allies’ raid, where it said civilians had been killed.

Iraq has said that 19 people--including two civilians--were killed in the U.S.-led military raids this week and that 15 were injured.

Although much of the regime’s rhetoric clearly was aimed at domestic consumption at a time when Hussein already has succeeded in diverting his people’s attention from the hyper-inflation and desperate shortages of spare parts caused by international trade sanctions, the Iraqi leadership was also directing its message at the Arab and Islamic audience that is gradually coming to Iraq’s defense.

In New York, the American, British, French and Russian ambassadors met with Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoun at the United Nations for a third day, warning him that Iraq is required both to let the U.N. flights into Baghdad and to guarantee their safety.

Throughout the crisis, confusion has been spawned by the tone and words of Hamdoun, a mild-mannered diplomat who does not exhibit the truculence and defiance of the rhetoric from Baghdad.

On Thursday, for example, Hamdoun, according to U.S. Ambassador Edward J. Perkins, assured the United States and its allies that the flights would be permitted and that their safety would be guaranteed “short of war.”

But, when the letter from foreign minister Sahaf reached the Security Council, it stated that “Iraq will not assume any responsibility for the safety of United Nations aircraft inside Iraqi airspace because of the aggression to which Iraq is subjected by United States, United Kingdom and French aircraft.”

Raid Reviews

The Pentagon said Friday that a major reason allied aircraft did not destroy all their targets in Wednesday’s raid was that the Administration had restricted the action to minimize the possibility that a U.S. pilot might be downed and captured by the Iraqi military.

Officials said the fear of that possibility prompted the Administration to order the sorties flown at night and to limit the aircraft to a single pass over their targets.

Military authorities also said one reason the high-technology, laser-guided “smart bombs” used by U.S. aircraft missed so many targets was that the laser beams were thwarted by clouds and moisture, making them inaccurate.

Times staff writers Stanley Meisler in Washington and Mark Fineman in Baghdad contributed to this report.