A Strategy That Hits All Fronts

WASHINGTON — “Today, the process starts.”

With those words, President Bush on Wednesday launched a multi-pronged strategy that will unfold over the next few months at a deliberate pace and will result, if all goes as the administration hopes, in the dismantling of Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction and the ouster of President Saddam Hussein sometime next year.

Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will tackle the tough diplomatic work of persuading key allies to join--or at least not publicly reject--a “coalition of the willing” that would enable the United States to eventually move against Iraq, administration officials said.

As part of these consultations, Washington is willing to consider a more aggressive round of United Nations weapons inspections to track and destroy any nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or ballistic missiles it finds, even though Hussein is unlikely to agree. It’s a compromise that may slow the pace, but the administration now acknowledges that it is also the main hope for winning international support.

“First things first,” Powell told reporters Wednesday after meeting with 10 European, African and Asian officials at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. “It would be the quickest, cleanest solution if the regime were to change, but there is an international community out there, and there are these [U.N.] resolutions which are still present.”

On a parallel track, the State Department, Pentagon and CIA will be working with the Iraqi opposition to develop plans for a government to replace Hussein’s and to determine what forces now inside the country, particularly in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, might be available to work with U.S. troops in a military campaign.

At home, the administration will throw its top foreign policy officials at congressional committee hearings to outline U.S. strategy.

“This has become a seven-ring circus, and all seven rings are running at the same time,” a senior administration official said Wednesday.

The administration refuses to discuss timelines, insisting that there are no target dates for wrapping up any phase of the international consultations and internal deliberations.

“There are no deadlines for decisions. These are real consultations, and what the president decides will be influenced by that process. There’s no high-noon decision expected soon,” the senior administration official said.

Yet some benchmarks are emerging.

Congress is due to break in October for midterm elections, and the White House made clear Wednesday that it hopes to have a mandate for action against Iraq from Capitol Hill before then.

Washington also hopes to spur the United Nations to action. The administration has not come up with a cutoff time, but again, the emphasis is on a few months.

“We have to go the U.N. route, and we have to give it the best effort. But if we can’t redefine the [inspections] process so it leads to the desired result, we won’t be jerked around,” said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“No one is saying we’ll give it only three, six or nine months, but the timing will become part of the equation as the discussions develop over the next few weeks,” the official said.

Added the senior administration official: “The experience with this regime is largely in, and we have to keep this in mind. We know the risks only increase with time. The longer he defies sanctions, the longer he develops weapons of mass destruction and the longer he develops ties with terrorists, the already great risk to our friends and allies only grows.”

To expedite the process, the State Department this week is completing two detailed reports for distribution worldwide. Department officials said the main document outlines what the U.S. knows about Iraq’s programs for weapons of mass destruction. Bush will cite some, but not all, of this information in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 12, they said.

The United States has no stunning revelations or dramatic new facts to make the case for ousting Hussein, senior U.S. officials said Wednesday. Instead, the document is based on “what we know, what we suspect and what we fear,” a State Department official said.

The United States has been working for months with Britain to accumulate an “evidentiary trail” on Iraq’s weapons programs since U.N. inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, and it has compiled data from the last 11 years, the official added.

“This is not going to be a dramatic ‘Here are the pictures, here are the firsthand stories.’ It’s more a larger-picture summary,” the well-placed official said.

The document will be based on five general categories of information: discoveries made by former U.N. inspectors; reports from recent defectors; intelligence from satellites and other technical devices; data on the importation of materiel needed to assemble chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; and general behavior.

“Hussein has given up $166 billion in oil since 1998 rather than let inspectors go back in. That’s a lot of money. The loss in oil income has been stupendous. That’s the sort of thing you tell a jury in the closing argument to make your case,” the well-placed official said.

In an interview with CNN, Powell said Wednesday that the United Nations needs to look at the accumulated facts to see how extensively Iraq has been thwarting the will of the international community since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The second document is a compendium of the Iraqi leader’s crimes against his people.

Both documents will be reviewed this weekend when Bush meets with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David in Maryland, where they will work on strategy to get other key members of the U.N. on board, U.S. officials said.

Finally, to spur the Iraqi opposition and lay the groundwork for the immediate post-Hussein period, the State Department has expanded and expedited its “Future of Iraq” program. A State Department official played host at a meeting of a group of Iraqi exiles Wednesday in London to discuss “democratic principles” for the next government in Baghdad. Three more working groups will meet this month.

In October, working groups will meet each week to deal with issues ranging from defense and the oil industry to the economy and foreign policy, according to State Department sources.

The Iraqi opposition is also expected to hold a U.S.-financed conference in Europe at the end of this month or early next month, the sources added. Some Iraqi exiles are now pressing for the conference to form a government-in-exile to take over once Hussein is ousted, somewhat like the conference of Afghan leaders in Germany last year.