War Appears Increasingly Unavoidable

WASHINGTON —  WASHINGTON -- One warning to Saddam Hussein was loud and clear Thursday: He has until Jan. 27 to come clean on his arsenal. The other warning was unspoken but just as clear: Or else.

U.N. and U.S. officials denied Thursday that there was a specific D-Day for a decision that would trigger a military campaign to disarm Baghdad of what the West insists is Iraq’s programs of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

“There is no calendar deadline,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, giving the administration’s formal response to Iraq’s weapons declaration. The United States, he insisted, is doing “everything we can to avoid war.”

Yet, with the first assessment from chief weapons Inspector Hans Blix, the United Nations passed a crucial turning point Thursday in the drama that began with a tough U.N. resolution in November. There is a growing sentiment even among Hussein’s traditional allies at the U.N. Security Council and doves in the Bush administration that, barring a political upheaval in Baghdad that preempts it, a U.S.-led military campaign appears increasingly unavoidable. The U.N. put Iraq on notice politely. The U.S. was more stern.

“Obviously, there is a practical limit to how much longer you can just go down the road of non-cooperation and how much time the inspectors can be given to do their work,” Powell said.

“Iraq continues its pattern of non-cooperation, its pattern of deception, its pattern of dissembling, its pattern of lying. And if that is going to be the way they continue through the weeks ahead, then we’re not going to find a peaceful solution to this problem,” he said.

To satisfy the U.S.-driven process, Baghdad would have to do a virtual about-face to avoid a military showdown. So Hussein has roughly another five weeks to confess everything the U.S. and its allies say he’s hiding and where he’s hiding it before the Security Council meets to hear the U.N. inspection team’s 60-day report on its work inside Iraq.

The Iraqi leader would also have to give inspectors unimpeded access to hundreds of scientists, engineers and technicians involved during the last two decades in programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles -- and allow them to talk with inspectors without behind-the-scenes intimidation.

Baghdad would then have to surrender all equipment, research material and documents, including invoices for purchases, involved in weapons programs. Finally, Iraq would have to begin passing laws making it illegal to again produce the world’s deadliest arms.

To avoid losing his power or his life, Hussein could still do all that -- or at least try to appear to be complying, say some analysts and former U.S. diplomats who have dealt with him.

“He may do what he did in 1995 after the defection of his son-in-law Hussein Kamal, when all of a sudden the Iraqis said they’d found some documents they didn’t know about and, my goodness, that showed they had a program,” said Joseph Wilson, the last U.S. ambassador to talk to Hussein.

“I would not be surprised at all to see him try to offer an amended declaration, but it would mainly be an attempt to play for time.”

But the scope of what Baghdad would have to do now seems beyond reach, say U.S. officials and U.N. envoys, as well as Iraq analysts.

“The extent of the gap in Iraq’s declaration is not just factual, it’s conceptual, so it’s not just a matter of making a few corrections, of fixing it,” said Ellen Laipson, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council and now president of the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

In a telling response, however, Baghdad instead continued to fume Thursday that it has no arsenal.

Iraq has no arms of mass destruction, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan told French radio. “I think the United States is well placed to know this in the first place, but the United States is looking for a pretext for an attack,” he said.

Until now, the U.S. military deployment has been on the periphery of diplomatic events. But it now becomes the center part of the story -- and of the pressure on Hussein, U.S. and U.N. officials say.

“With the intense military buildup and the growing support in the international community for the Anglo-American viewpoint that Iraq continues to cheat, Iraq’s military and political elites have to know that there will be a war if Saddam remains in power. And when that war comes, they’ll be finished,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration National Security Council staffer.

“While I’ve been skeptical about a coup, the probability of political upheaval grows with the imminence of a ground invasion. It’ll be the presence of large U.S. forces on the ground that will signal to the Iraqi elite that it’s over,” Kemp said.

The military momentum is going to be hard to slow, say diplomats and analysts.

“The United States still has the option of stopping the train at any time,” said Judith Yaphe, a former intelligence analyst now at National Defense University.

But the reality now is that everything is on the move toward war.