Iraq Declares a Truce in Goodwill Gesture to Clinton : Persian Gulf: Hussein orders halt to shooting at allied planes, drops curbs on U.N. flights. Action comes after latest air strikes; U.S. reacts with caution and skepticism.

In an “expression of goodwill” toward President-elect Bill Clinton on Tuesday, Saddam Hussein ordered his aircraft and missile batteries to stop shooting at U.S. and allied planes--even as President Bush continued to direct strikes against Iraq in his last full day in office.

In a further easing of tensions, Hussein, the Iraqi president, agreed to allow U.N. inspectors to fly into Iraq with guarantees of safety and without conditions.

“We will restart our flights as soon as the commission deems it feasible,” Rolf Ekeus, executive chairman of the special commission charged with eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, told reporters at the United Nations.

A halt to Iraqi belligerence against allied planes--which Hussein called a cease-fire--and an agreement to allow U.N. inspection flights appeared to end two main provocations cited by Bush as justification for recent U.S.-led attacks on military targets in Iraq. But Bush and Clinton officials received the news of the seeming Iraqi capitulations with caution and skepticism.

Hussein vowed to give Clinton “a calm climate” to study policies inherited from Bush. Hussein made it clear he wants Clinton to consider ending the “no-fly zones” set up by the allies to prevent Iraq from harassing Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south, and to consider lifting the 29-month-old U.N. trade embargo.

Diplomats and analysts in Baghdad predicted that Hussein’s announcement would be followed by a broad--perhaps even surprising--attempt by his regime to recast itself as gentler and more reform-minded.

In other developments Tuesday:

* Hours before Hussein announced his plans for a unilateral cease-fire, American warplanes attacked three more Iraqi air-defense sites, after Iraqis targeted U.S. and British jets and fired at an American fighter plane. The Pentagon said that in two incidents, U.S. planes fired at Iraqi batteries; in another case, American F-16 warplanes dropped cluster bombs on an Iraqi antiaircraft artillery installation.

* The Defense Department said the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy and other warships in its battle group are steaming into the eastern Mediterranean to bolster U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf in case of a new Iraqi attack. With the Kennedy are two Aegis-class cruisers, Leyte Gulf and Gettysburg--both of which carry Tomahawk cruise missiles--and the guided-missile cruiser Belknap, diverted en route to a port call in Portugal.

* Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali proposed that the U.N. Security Council send three battalions of armed soldiers to replace unarmed observers now patrolling the Iraq-Kuwait border. With support troops, the new force would number 3,645 soldiers, and, in his view, would be able to prevent the kind of incursions that Iraq mounted more than a week ago, helping to set off the crisis that culminated in the U.S.-led attacks.

* In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev continued to insist on a Security Council meeting to coordinate response to Iraqi provocations. He told reporters his government thinks the United Nations could find more peaceful means than U.S.-led attacks to induce Iraq to respect the world body’s authority in the wake of the Gulf War. Although the council met to discuss Iraqi inspections and the Iraqi-Kuwait border issue, it did not consider the Russian proposal.

* In Rome, the Vatican, accepting an appeal from Iraq, said it will ask the United Nations to encourage a peaceful resolution of the latest Gulf crisis. The Vatican said it is “convinced that a recourse to impose one’s will and one’s political programs cannot but lead to an increase of violence and to not always controllable consequences.” Pope John Paul II condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 but opposed the Gulf War, arguing that it could have been averted through more vigorous diplomacy.

* In Kuwait, U.S.-supplied Patriot missiles arrived to protect the emirate against any possible Scud missile reprisal attacks from Iraq. Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Jabbar al Sabah--the foreign minister--said Kuwait is not pleased that Iraqis have been killed in allied attacks, saying: “We don’t like to hate the people of Iraq. . . . Everybody thinks we are happy to see the killing of the Iraqi people. We don’t like to see that. But we’re looking at why they do it--for one man, he would like to fight with all the world, and with his people, too.”

* National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft told the Washington Post that the Bush Administration had adopted a covert plan to oust Hussein but was careful not to violate the U.S. ban on attempting to assassinate a foreign leader. He gave no details but suggested that it involved the Iraqi military.

The Iraqi View

Hussein’s statement expressed goodwill to Clinton and promised that Iraqi planes and batteries would not fire unless fired upon.

“We believe that the coming months are sufficient for the new American Administration to study this issue (of no-fly zones) and to show understanding for the other issues, especially lifting the oppressive embargo imposed on the Iraqi people, “ he said.

The regime took pains to cast its sudden offer not as a capitulation but as an olive branch intended to show to America and the world “the great Iraqi people and their love for peace.”

For Iraq’s domestic audience--impoverished by crippling trade sanctions and shaken by a week of allied air strikes that Baghdad said have killed 42 soldiers and civilians and shattered a state-run Baghdad hotel--Iraqi TV preceded the Hussein announcement with 10 minutes of footage of the president waving to adoring crowds against a soundtrack of songs of praise.

Diplomats and Iraqi intellectuals privately said Hussein’s gesture of peace had been expected by those who saw the latest crisis between Washington and Baghdad as a calculated, orchestrated strategy by the regime to draw international attention to the no-fly zones, which it considers illegal, and to what it sees as the interminable, onerous sanctions.

By deliberately moving surface-to-air missile batteries into threatening deployments and scrambling fighter jets to challenge allied aircraft enforcing the bans on Iraqi military aircraft, these analysts said, Hussein not only focused the world’s eyes on Baghdad but also drew a level of fire from the Bush Administration that was too limited to inflict major damage yet large and errant enough to bring sympathy for Iraq.

And Tuesday’s offer not to fire unless fired upon was seen by most diplomats and independent analysts in the capital as a virtual guarantee that Hussein genuinely is seeking a new era of peace with America and its allies.

Military Strikes

In Washington, the Pentagon said the first military incident Tuesday occurred about 10:30 a.m. Iraqi time, when a U.S. F-4G Wild Weasel fired an anti-radar HARM missile at an Iraqi missile site about 14 miles east of Mosul after the Iraqis had “locked on” the U.S. plane with radar.

About an hour later, a U.S. F-16 drew antiaircraft artillery fire from an Iraqi battery, but did not fire back.

In the third incident, which occurred at 1:30 p.m. Iraqi time, two F-16s dropped four cluster bombs on Iraqi batteries after the Iraqis fired at them first.

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said that Iraqi jets were continuing to penetrate the country’s northern no-fly zone in an attempt to lure allied aircraft into antiaircraft missile traps.

He brushed aside the Iraqi cease-fire offer, saying Iraq not only must stop firing at allied planes but also must dismantle its antiaircraft missiles.

The Clinton View

Clinton and his aides signaled the military to continue strikes against Iraqi targets today, if needed, and to continue to defend the no-flight zones against Iraqi incursions.

The clearance to hold with strict rules of engagement, conveyed to senior military leaders at the Pentagon and to commanders in the region, came as Clinton made both public and diplomatic efforts to squelch speculation that he might moderate the U.S. position on Hussein’s government.

These orders raised the possibility that combat might occur even as the new President is being sworn in. But military officers said they believe that Iraqi forces, in light of Hussein’s announcement, will avoid any confrontations, at least for the first few days of the Clinton Administration.

Fineman reported from Baghdad and Meisler from Washington. Times staff writers William D. Montalbano in Rome, Kim Murphy in Kuwait city, Carey Goldberg in Moscow and Art Pine, Melissa Healy and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.