White House Seeking Long-Range Iraq Policy

The White House has begun a full review of American policy toward Iraq, aimed at developing a long-range approach for dealing with the U.S.-Iraqi confrontation and--more immediately--for responding to Baghdad’s continued violations of allied cease-fire demands.

U.S. officials said Monday that policy-makers at the State Department, the Pentagon and other departments are drafting position papers for a meeting between President Clinton and his key national security advisers, possibly later this week or early in February.

Aides said that preliminary options now being assembled range from initial responses to the “peace” initiative from Baghdad last week to the launching of a new, broader air strike to damage more military targets in hopes of squeezing the Iraqi military leadership.

But officials cautioned that Clinton’s latitude may be narrowed by the recent dissension within the allied coalition over how far the United States should go in punishing Iraq. A U.S. Tomahawk missile attack on Iraq earlier this month drew criticism from France and Russia.

George Stephanopoulos, White House communications director, again rejected suggestions by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz on Monday that normal relations should be resumed between the two countries. “We need full compliance with all U.N. resolutions,” Stephanopoulos said.

The moves came as American military intelligence reports showed Iraq continuing to reposition antiaircraft missiles within the “no-fly zone” imposed by the West in the country’s southern sector--though this time apparently without aiming radar at any allied aircraft.

But military authorities asserted Monday that it still is too early to say precisely what Iraq intends in moving its missile batteries and that another day or two will be needed for a full assessment. The United States has ordered Iraq not to shift its missiles within the zone.

Elsewhere, the U.N. Security Council conducted another review of the economic sanctions it has imposed on Iraq and decided to leave them in effect, largely on grounds that Baghdad has continued to flout U.N. authority.

In other Iraq-related developments:

* After balking for months, Iraq turned over to the United Nations a list of 90% of the Western firms that had supplied it with materials and equipment for its nuclear weapons program. Analysts speculated that Baghdad was trying to influence Monday’s Security Council action.

* Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak suggested that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein step down for the good of the Iraqi people. He said Hussein’s defiance of the West had “ruined” Iraq.

* The U.N. World Food Program said its operations in Iraq had not been affected by allied air raids and that it plans to increase aid shipments to the central and southern regions of the country.

The presidential review of U.S. Iraqi policy is one of the first such studies undertaken by the Clinton White House. It was moved to the head of the agenda by the escalating confrontation.

After deliberately holding back during the election campaign, the Bush Administration began using military force early this month to retaliate against Iraqi provocations, downing Iraqi warplanes that crossed the allied no-fly zones and bombing a plant suspected of being part of Baghdad’s nuclear arms development system.

Although Clinton, then President-elect, repeatedly said that he fully supported President Bush’s moves, the new Administration’s national security advisers have indicated that they believe the United States needs a more coherent long-term policy toward Iraq.

Since Clinton was inaugurated, Iraq has followed a two-pronged approach--it has launched a fresh diplomatic push to begin a new “dialogue” with the United States while prodding America militarily.

Baghdad also has insisted that the no-fly zones--designed to protect the Kurdish population in Iraq’s north and Shiite Muslims in the south--are illegal because they were not specifically approved by the Security Council.