NEWS ANALYSIS : Bush’s Blows at Iraq Raise Troubling Questions at U.N.

President Bush’s departing military blows at Iraq have left some troubled feelings among diplomats in the corridors of the United Nations.

This mood means that Madeleine Albright, the incoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, may have to spend part of her first weeks on the job mollifying the irritated and may have a harder time than her most recent predecessors in pushing the American will through the Security Council.

This is far from a crisis for the United States. “The U.S. position has basically not been hurt,” said a European diplomat at the United Nations who consults often with other European delegates. Iraqi President “Saddam Hussein has no credibility here whatsoever.” But, he said, “there is some disquiet.”

This disquiet--among both European allies and Third World critics--stems from three issues:

* The shaky legal grounds for the “no-fly zones” set up by the United States, Britain and France in Iraq.

* The feeling by critics that the American punishment for Iraq was disproportionate; the French, Russians and Italians have all described the U.S. cruise missile attack on a weapons plant near Baghdad, with some civilian casualties, as far more than required to meet the Iraqi provocations.

* The bitter accusation, mainly from Islamic governments, that the United States has engaged in selective enforcement of Security Council resolutions; while moving against the Iraqis with alacrity, these diplomats say, the United States is unwilling to do anything about Serbian aggressors and Israeli transgressors--though both have been castigated in Security Council resolutions.

Iraq obviously wanted to call the world’s attention to the no-fly zones with its recent provocations. These zones have never been directly authorized by Security Council resolutions, although the U.S. government has insisted that it had ample authority to set them.

In a news briefing Tuesday in Washington, State Department spokesman Joe Snyder told reporters that the zones were established under the authority of Security Council Resolution 688 and that the United States had the authority to enforce these zones--in other words, to shoot down Iraqi planes--under Council Resolution 678.

Most outsiders look on this reasoning as tortuous and dubious. Under Resolution 688, approved on April 5, 1991, the Security Council demanded that Iraq end its repression of minorities and called on the U.N. secretary general and member nations to take care of the humanitarian needs of the suffering Iraqis.

Although the resolution did not mention protective regions, the United States, Britain and France, citing the resolution, later imposed no-fly zones to prevent the Iraqi military from repressing Kurds in the north and the Shiite Muslims in the south.

Not only did the resolution fail to mention no-fly zones, it also contained no provision providing for enforcement of its demand that the Iraqis stop repressing the minorities. But the United States insists that this authority is granted, generally, in Resolution 678.

That resolution, passed by the Security Council on Nov. 29, 1990, authorized the United States and its allies to use “all necessary means” to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. It is the resolution that sanctioned the Persian Gulf War.

So long as Iraq refrained from challenging the no-fly zones, few diplomats questioned the shaky ground under the U.S. position.

But when the Iraqis challenged the zones in the last two weeks and provoked reprisals from America, Britain and France, diplomats began to fret over the legitimacy of the American actions.

The most glaring defection from the Americans’ side came Wednesday when the French Foreign Ministry announced that France had refused to take part in the U.S. cruise missile attack in the Baghdad suburbs because “it exceeded the Security Council resolution.”

It was unclear what resolution French spokesman Louis Mermaz was talking about. But sources at the United Nations said that the French--like the Russians and Italians who distanced themselves from the attack Tuesday--believed this bombardment was out of proportion to the Iraqi offense.

In their most vociferous complaint, Arab diplomats--even those who oppose Hussein--point out that the United States and its allies fail to enforce resolutions against the Serbs and the Israelis, even while striking against Iraq for its violations of resolutions.

In the case of Bosnia, the Security Council passed a resolution last October imposing a no-fly zone against Serbian warplanes. But the council pointedly refused to include provisions for enforcement in the resolution.

In the case of Israel, the recent Security Council resolution demanding the return of the more than 400 Palestinians deported to southern Lebanon was not passed under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter--the chapter that gives the council authority to enforce its resolutions. Besides this, American and European diplomats say, this matter is probably best handled by allowing the Clinton Administration time to put pressure on the Israelis.