Bush’s Departure: Cheers in Baghdad but Mourning in Kuwait : Iraq: There is relief, and some gloating, in the capital. People cautiously hope that things will be better with Clinton.

The old Iraqi gambler with wise eyes and sure instincts put down his binoculars for a moment Wednesday, turned from the racetrack and smiled at a rare American visitor in the VIP room at the Iraqi Horse Club. The fifth race was about to start, and there is an unwritten rule here: No politics, just the races.

But this, after all, was the U.S. Inauguration Day, the event that many Iraqis hope is launching a new American leader who will bring changes both in Washington and here.

And it was the morning after Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s authoritarian leader, welcomed Bill Clinton with an olive branch, a unilateral vow to halt Iraqi defiance of the United States and the United Nations so, in his words, the American President can consider his policy toward Iraq in “a calm climate.”

“It is an important time for us all,” said the old gambler with a faint smile, when asked whether he expects a thaw in U.S.-Iraqi relations. “We are optimistic, yes. Two months, I think. It will happen very fast. Because Bill Clinton, we think he admires us very much. He is interested in making good business for the American economy. And we are part of it. Oil. We have everything he needs. So I think it will change very fast now.”

Then his eyes narrowed. He stared at his visitor intently and, before exploding in laughter, he added, “You want to bet on it?”

Few Iraqis would. Despite the sense of relief here as the latest Iraqi crisis appeared to be ending--along with George Bush’s term as President--most diplomats, Arab visitors and Baghdad residents were cautious and skeptical about possible changes in relations between the United States and Iraq. The prevailing theory is that it will take months--if it occurs at all.

Unlike Bush’s defeat at the polls last November, which Iraqis celebrated with huge street demonstrations and Hussein marked by firing nine shots into the air from his 9-millimeter automatic pistol, the mood Wednesday in Baghdad was restrained.

Hussein’s government played down the event.

“We hope that President Clinton would seek to establish a relationship of equality that ensures legitimate interests between Iraq and the Arabs on the one hand and the U.S. on the other,” declared Information Minister Hamid Youssef Hammadi in a brief statement. It was the regime’s only public comment on the American transfer of power.

Stressing that Clinton would distract himself from his most critical issue of repairing the American economy if he followed the advice of his military hard-liners who have urged further action against Iraq, Hammadi added, “I also hope that Mr. Clinton would not keep Bush’s group in the State Department and Defense Department, because they are yes men who only read Bush’s lips.”

While some official media were notably restrained about Clinton, the state-controlled press took plenty of bitter parting shots at Bush, whom one publication called “the defeated and rejected killer.”

“The only task that Bush will perform today is to leave, and to plunge into the depths of the heavy darkness of history,” declared an editorial in Al Thawra, the daily organ of Hussein’s ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party. “Today is the end of the present and the beginning of the past for Bush.”

The government newspaper Al Jumhuriyah declared, “For Bush, suicide is the best remedy.” It accused him of suffering from mental illness and said its advice “to Bush’s psychiatrists is to lock him in a place adorned with an Iraqi flag from Zakhu (in the north) and Kuwait and give him a shock treatment.”

On the streets of Baghdad, Bush is reviled less, perhaps, for his ordering the incessant allied bombing of Iraq than for abandoning Iraqis when 14 of 18 provinces rose in rebellion against Hussein in the final days of the Gulf War two years ago.

While Iraqis’ private fears and cynicism about their own regime remain high, there was uncertainty but some hope Wednesday that Clinton may not carry out his stated intention to pursue Bush’s policies on Iraq.

When asked whether the regime’s cease-fire announcement on the eve of Clinton’s inauguration was good news, a shop owner in a posh Baghdad neighborhood, hard-hit by U.N. trade sanctions and the harsh economic policies Hussein has used to withstand them, said: “No. Not yet. We wait. Tomorrow? Two days? Three days? Four days? We wait and see.

“No,” he repeated in a near-whisper, when asked whether the wait would be to see what Clinton will say and do.

“No,” the merchant replied, “we wait for Saddam Hussein.”

Most Iraqis know that Clinton probably will not change U.S. policy toward Iraq unless Baghdad changes its first--particularly its defiance of the United Nations and its oppression of the opposition-minded Kurdish and Shiite Muslim communities.

Iraqi sources said Hussein is studying proposals for reforms meant to shore up his regime, as well as new weapons-disclosure policies for the United Nations.

“Step by step, they (the regime) will make concessions,” one diplomat said. “Now they will be more receptive” to U.N. weapons inspectors instead of hindering them, as they did in a move that helped to provoke the present crisis. “It’s a lot better now than before. But, of course, you can’t say that everything will go smoothly. Clinton is committed to certain things, and you cannot expect Saddam Hussein to make too many concessions right away.”

The diplomat analyzed the current crisis, which many of his colleagues and regime sources said Hussein orchestrated to focus the incoming President’s attention on Iraq while embarrassing the outgoing President and seeking to win sympathy worldwide.

“Saddam wanted mostly to demonstrate his capabilities, to say, ‘If the Americans do not want to improve their relations with Iraq, they will have a permanent headache here,’ ” the diplomat said.

As for ordinary Iraqis, he concluded: “The people are very well disciplined. They know a decision has been made by the government. And they know it can be changed tomorrow, although I don’t expect this policy to change.”