FACING DOWN A DESPOT

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Air strikes are planned against the headquarters of the Iraqi officials who barred the U.N. inspectors from doing their job and against many of 200 suspected production centers for weapons of mass destruction--80 of them for chemical weapons, 100 for biological weapons and 20 for nuclear weapons, according to a Defense Department official. Unlike chemical and nuclear weapons, which require elaborate industrial facilities and make relatively easy targets, biological agents can be produced in a place the size of a two-room apartment. "There's no way we can find and bomb them all," says the source. But where it suspects the weapons of mass destruction are being produced or stored, the Pentagon will try out prototype weapons designed to "defeat nuclear-biological-chemical threats before they can be used," as a 1995 report phrased it. One penetrating warhead burrows through earth and concrete before detonating; an incendiary warhead burns up biological and chemical agents before they can spew poison into the atmosphere.

Washington believes it has all the authority it needs to attack Iraq under existing U.N. resolutions. Security Council sources believe it is unlikely that Washington will go back to the Council for authorization since France and Russia would probably exercise their veto power. In the next week Clinton will try to get those allies on board in some fashion by asking them to try to change Saddam's mind. Clinton planned to speak on the phone over the weekend with both Boris Yeltsin and Jacques Chirac; Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov, who has been in frequent contact with Iraqi leaders, would like to play peace broker. If Clinton asked him to fly to Baghdad, he would happily do so. But Clinton isn't optimistic about diplomacy's chances, and there is no sign that either France or Russia is willing to budge on the issue of using force.

Both countries have been arguing for a year that because Iraq has made progress toward eliminating its arsenals of missiles and chemical weapons (though not its biological stores), it should receive some kind of carrot--a partial lifting of economic sanctions--to go with all the sticks. (The U.S. considers the "oil-for-food" swap it approved last December to be in this category; the plan allowed Iraq to sell $4 billion worth of oil, using the money for food and medicine.) The motives of the French and the Russians are suspect, however, because both countries stand to reap financial windfalls from a lifting of sanctions. Iraq owes Russia an estimated $10 billion in foreign-aid loans--money that can't be paid back so long as Iraqi funds are frozen--and Russian companies have some $20 billion in contracts with Iraq ready to kick in if sanctions are lifted. France's Elf Aquitaine and Total Petroleum companies are negotiating similar deals.

France and Russia contend that military action against Saddam could be self-defeating: if he refuses to budge, the Arab world could rise up against the spectacle of sustained bombing. "Surgical air strikes will not eliminate [U.S.] suspicions," says Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Sergei Lavrov, "and they will raise hell in the region. Blanket bombing will turn everyone in the Arab world against the U.S."