U.S. Attacks North Iraq Missile Site : Persian Gulf: Pentagon says radar tracked two jets. Baghdad calls charge ‘fabricated’ but indicates it will hold to its cease-fire.

The United States said Friday that it attacked an Iraqi antiaircraft missile battery for the second day in a row, but Baghdad called the assault “a fabricated one aimed at provocation” and indicated that it would hold to its unilateral cease-fire.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said an American warplane fired two missiles at a missile radar site in the northern “no-fly zone.” But at least one of the missiles apparently missed its target, officials said.

They said the Iraqi surface-to-air missile radar had tracked a U.S. F-4G fighter and an F-16 patrolling over the no-fly zone near the north’s major city of Mosul, prompting what American officials called a “defensive action.”

An Iraqi government statement denied that Iraq has any surface-to-air missile sites or “any other types of antiaircraft (weapons)” in that area near Mosul, where incidents occurred Thursday and Friday.

One knowledgeable Pentagon official said it appeared that Iraq had now begun to focus its provocative actions in the northern no-fly zone, patrolled by allied warplanes operating under strict limits out of Turkey. Those aircraft are not permitted to fly at night or to engage in actions that are considered by the Turkish government to be disproportionate to Iraqi provocations.

“It looks like more of the same from the nut,” said the official, referring to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “He continues to harass, to cheat and to retreat.”

But in Baghdad, officials Friday sent many signals that Iraq hopes to move the focus of the current crisis from the battlefield to the diplomatic arena.

The brief statement about the latest military incident, for example, was issued by Iraq’s Foreign Ministry, rather than the Defense Ministry; the defense agency had issued a flurry of vitriolic pronouncements during Iraq’s military showdown with the Bush Administration a week ago.

But in a briefing for the foreign diplomatic corps in Baghdad before Friday’s attack, Mohammed Said Sahaf, Iraq’s foreign minister, said his government has no intention of provoking the allies. Instead, he said, Iraq will abide by the cease-fire declared by Hussein’s ruling council on the eve of President Clinton’s inauguration.

To further underscore the regime’s new approach, the Information Ministry on Friday took about 25 foreign journalists to the site of a Thursday U.S. air strike south of Mosul. Officials said they hoped to show that Iraq has no missile batteries in the region and that there were no civilian casualties in the strike. The official tour provided extraordinary access to Iraqis--military officers in the area and civilians; it was a marked departure from previous, heavily staged tours of damaged zones, which included visits to civilian hospitals and neighborhoods allegedly hit by errant bombs or missiles.

Iraqi officials said the regime’s goal in forcing a crisis on President Bush during the final days of his term was to focus international attention on the allied-patrolled no-fly zones. The allies have insisted the zones are needed to protect the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from persecution by Hussein’s regime. But Baghdad has said it fears the air-exclusion zones could fragment the country.

The Bush Administration and the Western allies imposed the no-fly zones under their interpretation of U.N. resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.

But, in a diplomatic campaign that has been gaining strength among Iraq’s allies and enemies alike, Baghdad used the crisis to advance its argument that the no-fly zones were not approved by the Security Council and lack the force of international law; the U.N. legal staff raised questions about the zones Thursday.

Iraq had employed fiery, angry rhetoric to make its case about the allied restrictions until President Clinton took office. But Hussein then announced his unilateral cease-fire to offer what Baghdad said would be “a calm climate” for the new Administration to rethink its policies toward this strategic, oil-rich nation.

To further the tone of reconciliation, the Iraqis again welcomed and expedited the arrival Friday in Baghdad of a second team of U.N. weapons inspectors.

The inspectors are part of an expanding presence of international arms experts, who are authorized by U.N. cease-fire resolutions to search out and destroy Iraq’s programs to build weapons of mass destruction; the Iraqis have indicated a new willingness to work with inspectors, whom they have challenged and deceived in the past.

On Friday, Iraqi officials also confirmed that military checkpoints have been sharply reduced throughout Baghdad. Posters condemning the United States have been removed from government compounds. And the rhetoric in the state-run press has been distinctly measured and moderate.

There was another subtle but striking signal to Iraqis in Baghdad on Friday that remarkable changes are afoot here: The ruling party published an opinion poll in its daily newspaper. Appearing on the front page of Friday’s editions of Al Thawra--the powerful organ of Hussein’s Arab Baath Socialist Party--and reported in full the previous night on state-run Iraqi television, the poll found that 82% of Iraqis questioned supported Hussein’s unilateral cease-fire.

In a nation where to dissent from the government’s view has meant death in the past, it also was surprising to see, as reported in the Al Thawra poll, that 18% of the respondents disagreed with Hussein’s new policy.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this report.