Baghdad Makes New Overtures

Iraq felt the stings of both war and peace Monday as allied warplanes hit communications sites in the south and the government tried to forestall a U.S.-led invasion by destroying more missiles while promising to answer long-standing questions about biological and chemical weapons.

The White House suggested that the likelihood of war had increased, although Pentagon planners said an alternative plan to advance on Baghdad from the north without Turkey’s help could delay action until late March or early April. The Bush administration continued to press Ankara to reverse its refusal to allow U.S. ground troops on Turkish soil.

U.S. officials said the fighter jets struck only military targets near Basra in the “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq. Baghdad claimed that six civilians were killed and 15 hurt. Official Iraqi media have denounced the aggressive tactics and broader targeting by U.S. and British jets that patrol the zones over northern and southern Iraq as the disguised beginning of a new war.

“The next war in the south has begun,” an Iraqi government spokesman said.

In spite of that view, Saddam Hussein’s government crushed more banned missiles, cut up a casting chamber for other missiles and offered to answer questions about chemical and biological agents.

With four days to go before a key U.N. report that could determine whether the Security Council authorizes military action, Iraqi officials were trying hard to convince wavering council members that there was no need for a new resolution and that the inspections resumed in November were sufficient to ensure that Iraq is free of banned weapons.

U.S. officials were not impressed. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, said Washington would press for a vote in the Security Council next week on a resolution that could open the door for a U.S.-led attack.

It is unclear whether the U.S. and its allies on the sharply divided council have the votes they need to pass a resolution.

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer suggested that war against Iraq was all but inevitable because, in the administration’s view, Hussein would not be able to prove that he has destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction.

“Here’s the Catch-22 that Saddam Hussein has put himself in: He denied he had these weapons, and then he destroys things he says he never had,” Fleischer said. “If he lies about never having them, how can you trust him when he says he’s destroyed them?

“How do you know he’s not lying, he doesn’t have tons more buried under the sand somewhere else? How do you know this is not the mother of all distractions, diversions, so the world looks in one place while he buries them in another?”

Fleischer rejected the Iraqi disarmament efforts, saying, “There is one thing that is helpful, and that is complete, total, immediate disarmament, per Resolution 1441,” which the Security Council approved unanimously in November.

With war looming, the U.S. and Britain have become more aggressive in patrolling the no-fly zones, expanding their list of targets to weaponry such as surface-to-surface missiles.

To the Iraqis, it now appears that the stepped-up flights and strikes are meant to prepare the battlefield and make a likely invasion easier.

The number of airstrikes in the southern no-fly zone increased from 32 in 2001 to 60 last year, according to U.S. military data. There have been 27 so far this year.

Also Monday, Iraq pledged to submit to inspectors within a week a detailed report on how it proposes to prove that it destroyed its stores of anthrax and about 1.5 tons of the deadly nerve agent VX in 1991, two key questions about Baghdad’s possible stores of weapons of mass destruction.

Gen. Amir Saadi, Iraq’s top official dealing with the weapons inspectors, said high-tech instruments available in the West would be able to analyze ground samples from the area where the materials were disposed of and would even be able to trace the DNA of the biological agents.

A source with the weapons inspectors said the monitors were willing to listen to the Iraqi proposals, but they doubted that the analysis would eliminate all uncertainty about the amount of the biological and chemical agents destroyed at the sites.

Meanwhile, Iraqi technicians used bulldozers Monday to crush six more of the banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles at the Taji military complex about 20 miles north of Baghdad, bringing to 16 the number destroyed in three days in response to an order by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

At this rate, Iraq’s arsenal of 120 Al-Samoud 2 missiles would be destroyed in three weeks.

Blix ordered the missiles, their warheads, engines and other components destroyed on grounds that they could be fired beyond a U.N.-mandated range of 93 miles. Their destruction is expected to bolster the argument by Security Council members who are opposed to war that inspections are working.

Iraq also began slicing up the second of two casting chambers used in the manufacture of the Al-Fatah solid-fuel rocket, using blowtorches at a site 60 miles south of Baghdad.

Blix has not yet decided whether to ban the Al-Fatah rocket itself. The chambers, however, could be used to create missiles more powerful than those allowed by the U.N.

Iraqi authorities gave no details about the civilians it said were killed or injured in the airstrike near Basra.

The claim was not immediately verifiable; a request by journalists to visit the Basra area and tour the site was turned down by the local government without explanation.

“The enemy attacked one of our civil and service installations in Basra province, and this attack resulted in the martyrdom of six citizens and the injury of 15 others,” said the state-controlled news agency.

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Times staff writers Tyler Marshall in Doha, Qatar, and Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.