U.S. Seeks to Trip Up Iraq

To prepare for phase two of the disarmament campaign in Iraq, U.S. intelligence is “whittling down” a list of discrepancies and holes in Baghdad’s arms declaration to identify the top half-dozen or so as the basis for an intense and tightly timed series of inspections, probably in the new year, according to U.S. officials.

The Bush administration wants to identify a few “clear winners” that will either find hidden weapons of mass destruction, produce proof that they still exist elsewhere or lead to a confrontation because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein balks at full compliance, the sources said.

“This is the trickiest stage. We won’t have many chances to screw up. Otherwise, we’ll lose the initiative. If the first couple inspections turn up nothing and it looks like we’re crying wolf, then it’ll discredit or make harder subsequent efforts that may have more merit,” said one well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity.

“We have to pick clear winners and play it right or the United Nations will run out of patience and we’ll hand the advantage back to Saddam. So there’s a lot of gamesmanship involved here,” the official said.

Speed will be crucial to success during phase two, U.S. officials added. Washington will press the U.N. teams to move more decisively than in the current piecemeal fashion, they said.

“When everything is in place, then they’ll move quickly and in a concerted fashion. It’s like trying to find cockroaches in your kitchen at midnight. Once you turn on the light, you have less than three minutes to get them. It’s the same principle with Iraq,” said a Bush administration official.

To block or chase attempts to move materiel, the U.S. wants the inspections to deploy rapid-response “B teams” alongside the “A teams” assigned to do the initial investigations -- a follow-up capability earlier U.N. inspectors didn’t have, the sources said.

And, to ensure the inspections’ maximum effectiveness, the planning will have to be “down to the second” -- to coordinate, for example, satellites monitoring Iraqi trucks that might be parked near a facility and might move out as a U.N. team moved in -- said an official involved in the process.

“We don’t want him to be able to play a shell game with the inspectors,” the administration official said in reference to Hussein.

The phase two inspections will also have to be “married” to interviews with Iraqi scientists, engineers and other technicians involved in specific weapons programs.

“Once we’ve whittled down the list of discrepancies or targets, we’ll say, ‘This is our recommended strategy to test Iraqi assertions, and here are three ways you can go about proving they’re lying,’ ” said the well-placed source.

U.N. inspectors will be encouraged to launch simultaneous investigations of possible storage facilities, research and development sites, and Iraqi personnel who should have inside information about nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or ballistic missiles, the sources added.

Still, U.S. officials predict that even an intricately coordinated round of inspections could be fraught with problems.

“If it was easy, we would have proved he was lying a long time ago,” said the administration official.

Because of the sheer volume of reputed discrepancies in the declaration, the United States has decided that for now it is unrealistic to pursue most of them on the ground.

But many of the disparities will be compiled in a fuller record for the U.N. Security Council, U.S. officials said.

“It’d take forever to prove all of them, so our strategy is to be like a canary in a coal mine,” said the well-placed official.

The Bush administration, backed by Britain, is also preparing a major diplomatic offensive to ensure that France, Russia and China -- the other three permanent members of the Security Council -- all take a tough stand after fully evaluating the 11,807-page document submitted to the U.N. a week ago by Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has reportedly been engaged in almost daily telephone calls to his counterparts among the so-called Perm-5, discussions that continued over the weekend.

“He’s coordinating our approach with other friends and inspectors as we move toward formal discussions next week,” said a senior State Department official.

Washington plans to keep the identities of the selected sites and scientists close to the vest as long as possible to avoid giving Hussein any hint of the targets, but U.S. officials acknowledge that the Iraqi leader could easily figure out what the most likely ones are.

Meanwhile, in an apparent attempt to ease the international pressure on him, Hussein has begun playing an aggressively defensive game, cutting off key players in the Iraq showdown from lucrative financial deals, say U.S. officials and regional experts.

Last week, Iraq’s Oil Ministry notified Moscow that it was canceling a $3.7-billion deal to develop its West Qurnah field, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, quoting a Russian Lukoil spokesman. Lukoil’s failure to develop the field, which is estimated to have reserves of 7.3 billion barrels, was cited as the reason.

Baghdad has been pressing the Russians to begin work on the field, a move that would violate U.N. economic sanctions. Although Russia has long argued Baghdad’s case at the United Nations, Moscow voted last month for the U.N. resolution authorizing inspections.

“Saddam expects them to do more to end inspections, to end sanctions and to work harder to press his case. He’s disappointed when they don’t. He’s always said that those who work with him would be favored in contracts and those who didn’t work with him or support his position would pay,” said Judith Yaphe, a former intelligence analyst now at the National Defense University in Washington.

In addition, Iraq has recently canceled food contracts with Australia, apparently also because of its support for the U.S. position.

“He’s playing a clever chess game at the moment,” Yaphe said.

Baghdad is also putting pressure on neighbors, notably Turkey and Jordan, with warnings that if Hussein’s regime is toppled, they too will pay a big price.

“The message is clear: ‘If we go down, you’ll go down with us. And if you’re thinking of opposing us or supporting Americans, and if Americans invade and you don’t work to prevent it, there’ll be chaos in the region and your economies will be in the toilet,’ ” Yaphe added. “That can have an impact because these are fragile regimes.”

Hussein’s apology to Kuwait earlier this month also had an aggressive sub-theme directed at other neighbors in the Persian Gulf.

“It was more of a threat than an apology. He basically called on the Kuwaiti people to rise up against Americans and the ruling Al Sabah family. He said they were corrupt and put Kuwaiti money in Western banks,” said Henri J. Barkey, a former policy planning staffer on Iraq at the State Department now at Lehigh University. “He’s trying to show that he still has the ability to punish people.”

The administration says it isn’t worried about Baghdad’s recent moves.

“These things only alienate his friends. They’re not successful,” said the State Department official. “The fact is that, like us, they’re focused on disarmament before anything else.”