Iraq May Seek Confrontation, Aspin Says

Defense Secretary Les Aspin said Sunday that Iraq may be moving antiaircraft missiles back into the U.S.-ordered “no-fly zones,” setting up a confrontation with the new Administration.

However, Aspin provided no details and said that it is too early to be sure if the missile movements signal a new Iraqi challenge to the United States and its allies.

“I think it’s a little soon to determine what’s going on (in Iraq) since the Clinton Administration took office,” Aspin said. “I think we’re going to need to wait a couple of days to make sure. . . . One of the things we need to be watching in the next couple of days is the placement of those SAMs (surface-to-air missiles).”

Former President George Bush ordered a series of punitive strikes at Iraqi targets earlier this month after Iraq deployed surface-to-air missiles in the zones. The Pentagon later said that Iraq had moved the missiles so that they no longer constituted a danger to allied air operations.

In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein’s government said that it continues to adhere to a “cease-fire” ordered to coincide with President Clinton’s inauguration Wednesday, despite three skirmishes in the no-fly zones since then.

Information Minister Hamid Youssef Hammadi said that Iraq is ready for “pragmatic, businesslike discussion” with the Clinton Administration. He said that the recent clashes were “minor ones, and we are committed to the cease-fire.”

U.S. officials said that they are bewildered by Iraq’s political maneuvering, which seems to be aimed at easing tensions with the new Administration while continuing to challenge the no-fly zones, which Baghdad has said it considers illegal.

But interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Aspin said that there is virtually no chance for better relations between Washington and Baghdad as long as Hussein remains in power.

Although he said that it is time to “depersonalize” the conflict by focusing on Iraqi compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions instead of concentrating on Hussein, Aspin added quickly: “To get (compliance with) those U.N. resolutions, Saddam Hussein has to go.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi news agency quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as denying a Pentagon report that Iraqi antiaircraft guns had fired on three U.S. Navy warplanes in the southern no-fly zone late Saturday.

The incident “did not take place at all,” the official was quoted as saying.

Aspin conceded that there is no proof that an Iraqi antiaircraft battery actually shot at the U.S. planes. He said all that is known for certain is that the U.S. pilot “thought he was being fired on” and reacted in accordance with standing orders by dropping a laser-guided bomb on what he believed was a hostile gun emplacement.

At the time the Pentagon announced the incident Saturday, it appeared to mark an escalation of the conflict because it was the first time since Clinton took office that Iraqi gunners were reported to have fired on U.S. planes. In the two previous incidents, Iraqi missile emplacements “locked on” U.S. planes with so-called target radar, a step that is considered a hostile act because it is a necessary prelude to firing, but the Iraqis did not actually launch missiles.

The United States and its Persian Gulf War allies established the no-fly zones to prevent the Baghdad regime from bombing and strafing rebellious Iraqi population centers. The northern zone, above the 36th Parallel, was imposed in April, 1991, to protect Kurdish areas, while the southern zone, below the 32nd Parallel, was declared last August to protect Shiite Muslim rebels.

With the two zones in place, Iraq has free use of its air space only between the 32nd and 36th parallels. Iraq considers the zones, which were not specifically authorized by the U.N. Security Council, to be infringements on its sovereignty.

In a related development, the New Yorker magazine said Sunday that Western weapons inspectors are plagued by internal tensions and conflicts of interest that may mean the Gulf War allies will never locate and destroy all of Iraq’s facilities that could be used to develop nuclear arms.

Gary Milhollin, a non-proliferation expert in Washington who wrote the article in the New Yorker, blamed demoralized inspectors and timid management by the International Atomic Energy Agency for providing Baghdad with enough time to conceal much of what remained of its nuclear capacity after the Gulf War.