BY MEGAN ARNEY
Washington is preparing the ground for a new assault against the Iraqi people, after Baghdad barred entry to three U.S. officials who were part of a United Nations operation inspecting weapons production in Iraq. White House representatives have explicitly left open the option of a military strike. "This is a very serious matter," State Department spokesman James Rubin said October 30. "We are not ruling out any option at this time." An unnamed U.S. Clinton administration official told the New York Times that Washington may try to declare the Iraqi government in violation of the cease-fire agreements signed at the end of the U.S.-led war on Iraq in 1991, clearing the way for military action.

In recent weeks, Washington has bolstered its forces in the region, which include 20,000 U.S. troops and 200 warplanes. There are 17 U.S. Navy ships in the Arab-Persian Gulf, including the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz dispatched there in October ahead of schedule. An additional 1,500 U.S. soldiers are in Kuwait on land warfare exercises, and about 2,000 are wrapping-up similar war maneuvers in Egypt.

Since August of 1990, Washington has led a United Nations embargo against Iraq, which is maintained on the pretext that the regime of Saddam Hussein is supposedly not complying with restrictions on weapons production it previously agreed to. The UN arms inspection team, established in the wake the war, is supposed to certify that Baghdad does not have major weaponry or the capacity to build it. Thus the inspectors, led by those from the United States, are at the center of maintaining the sanctions. The embargo has crippled the Iraqi economy and has led to the death of an estimated 500,000 children from malnutrition and disease. In January 1993 Washington launched cruise missiles at Baghdad after Iraq restricted inspectors. More recently, Washington has tightened the embargo.

The pretext for stepped-up war moves is the Iraqi decision to begin refusing entry to U.S. officials of the UN weapons investigation team. Baghdad had earlier ordered ten other U.S. inspectors already in the country to leave.

Since 1991 the U.S. government has routinely used U-2 spy planes to photograph parts of Iraq as an integral part of the "arms inspection." On November 2 Iraqi representatives at the United Nations asked UN chief inspector Richard Butler to cancel scheduled intelligence flights for the following week, which Baghdad has threatened to shoot down. U.S. president William Clinton warned Hussein that it would be a "big mistake" if the threat to shoot down the U.S. planes was carried out. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations William Richardson declared at a congressional hearing, "we are not - I repeat not -withholding any option of any kind."

Speaking on the NBC TV news program "Meet the Press," Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newton Gingrich said, "We should be prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to enforce [the] rules." When asked if that included military action, he replied, "Absolutely." Senate majority leader Trent Lott, also a Republican, and the Democratic congressional leaders Thomas Daschle and Richard Gephardt echoed similar views on that program.

Washington's moves come at a time when the so-called coalition that waged the 1991 assault against Iraq is fissuring. Washington attempted to force the UN Security Council to invoke sanctions and travel restrictions on Iraq in late October. But the governments of France, Russia, China, Egypt, and Kenya opposed it. In the end, only a milked-down resolution was issued with a strong threat of added restrictions. On October 30 the UN Security Council called on Iraq to reverse its decision to ban the U.S. members of the inspection team. This time the French and Russian representatives abstained from the vote. The New York Times quoted an unnamed U.S. official speaking of the "uncertainty about the cohesiveness of the anti-Iraq coalition that waged the Persian Gulf war."

Paris has oil and gasoline companies negotiating future production deals in Iraq; and Russia's Lukoil signed a production-sharing pact with Iraq in March, which is valued at $3.8 billion. In early November, 65 Jordanian businessmen visited Baghdad. Paris and Moscow delegates to the UN, backed by Arab and African nations, have said that the use of force would not be acceptable without further action by the UN Security Council.  
 
 
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