Hussein Seems to Be Timing a Fray Carefully

On the eighth anniversary of its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq appears determined this week to provoke yet another confrontation with the West over U.N. efforts to rid Baghdad of its deadliest weapons.

Clinton administration officials have long predicted a new showdown as part of President Saddam Hussein’s long-running effort to erode the international consensus backing tough economic sanctions against his regime. But the U.S. officials had not expected the trouble to start until this fall, closer to the semiannual review of the sanctions that the United Nations is scheduled to conduct in October.

Hussein, however, may have accelerated his timetable to take advantage of the administration’s preoccupation with domestic scandal and its sagging status in the Middle East because of the long-deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, U.S. analysts say.

In the latest development, Iraq surprised both U.S. and U.N. officials Monday by balking at a plan that, ironically, would have expedited the lifting of sanctions. It would have required Baghdad to move up the schedule for handing over the last and potentially most sensitive data on its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

On the first day of talks on the plan, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz instead demanded that chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler certify that his work was complete and that Baghdad had eliminated its entire stock of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles.

Butler responded to the Iraqi move by cutting short his visit. He is to brief the U.N. Security Council on the situation Thursday.

The diplomatic skirmish also comes as European allies are focused on fighting in the Yugoslav region of Kosovo--and whether NATO should get involved in it. And as oil prices sag and Asia’s financial crisis spills over on Western economies, the prospect of another expensive military deployment in the Persian Gulf holds little appeal.

“It’s classic for Saddam to play to half a dozen different crises. The kinds of crises going on now, like last year, give him reason to think there is a distraction,” said Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the National Defense University in Washington.

The breakdown in talks between Butler and Iraqi officials triggered the kind of volatile war of words Tuesday that has often preceded the frequent showdowns Iraq has had with the West since the sanctions were imposed at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In Baghdad, Hussein chaired a joint emergency meeting of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council and top officials of the ruling Baath Party to discuss the breakdown. A subsequent government statement warned that the leadership had taken a “series of decisions . . . to protect Iraq’s national rights” and that they would be “announced shortly.”

The United States also took a firm stand. “We’ll let the facts speak for themselves,” a senior U.S. official said. “Iraq’s obligations are clear. The burden of proof is on the Iraqis, not the U.N.,” to show Baghdad has met the requirements for lifting the sanctions.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin labeled Iraq’s move “inexplicable” and “disturbing.” Hussein had “shot himself in the foot,” he added.

“Butler traveled to Baghdad to follow up on an accelerated work plan he agreed on with the Iraqis two months ago, which in turn followed a series of technical meetings held over the last eight months,” Rubin said.

“It is inexplicable for Iraq to break off talks that were specifically designed to accelerate the lifting of sanctions. Iraq is only harming itself and its people.”

And White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said: “I think Saddam Hussein has probably watched too many episodes of ‘Star Trek.’ He believes he can turn to the [U.N.] Security Council and just be beamed from noncompliance to compliance.”

Washington avoided direct saber-rattling, although Crowley noted that the military option remains “absolutely” open.

Many of the U.S. reinforcements sent to the Gulf region last winter during Hussein’s last showdown with the West have been withdrawn in recent weeks, however. Only one carrier group remains in the Gulf.

British officials said Tuesday that Baghdad had to reverse course and stop “thwarting” the U.N.

“There can be no question of the U.N. or the world community backing down. We are not going to give in until the job is finished,” said Foreign Minister Robin Cook.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he hoped the breakdown in talks was only “a hiccup” that can be ‘overcome.”

Annan’s eleventh-hour mediation in February averted a likely military clash with Iraq in response to Hussein’s refusal to grant U.N. weapons inspectors full access to various sites.

Iraq’s balking this week at the plan for turning over its data on weapons development is in direct defiance of the agreement Annan worked out, throwing the whole process into uncertainty unless Baghdad again backs down.

But U.N. discoveries since the pact was signed may make Baghdad less interested in complying with its terms. Weapons inspectors recently found that Iraq had successfully adapted deadly VX, a chemical weapon, for a Scud warhead, an advanced capability that Baghdad had hidden for years.

“They caught him in a big lie again,’ Yaphe said. ‘Who knows what else the Iraqis are hiding?”

The discovery also diminished the chances of much progress in the U.N.’s October review of sanctions.

“If the Iraqis concluded the revelations about VX were so damaging, then they might have decided to move sooner than anticipated [in causing a new showdown]. After all, why wait if you’re going to get a bad report? This way, they catch the United States unprepared,” said Kenneth Pollack, a contributor to the new Iraq Strategy Review published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.