'Strike first' policy on Iraq? Not so easy

President Bush has not wavered in his stated goal of unseating the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but the US military faces diplomatic and practical obstacles on its path to Baghdad.

Mr. Bush set forth his resolve in a speech Saturday to West Point graduates, stating that in the post-9/11 world, the US military must be prepared to launch preemptive strikes, to "confront the worst threats before they emerge."

He didn't mention Iraq by name, but clearly implied it would fall among the potential targets. Bush talked of an unprecedented threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear attack from "terrorists and tyrants."

Still, recent signs suggest that the debate that has raged in Washington since Sept. 11 over whether to take military action against Iraq is far from over.

A key factor complicating any decision to move forward with a military operation is Iraq's new willingness to discuss a return of UN weapons inspectors absent since 1998. Advocates of using force see this as a ploy by Hussein.

But US allies in Europe are so far reluctant to endorse the military option, with some favoring the pursuit of alternatives to contain Hussein, such as arms inspections.

Reservations over using military force to unseat Hussein are also surfacing in the American public and among members of Congress and the US armed services. Moreover, potential allies in the Mideast are putting priority on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

"The outcome of US policy is not predetermined," says Kenneth Katzman, an Iraq specialist at the Congressional Research Service who advises members of Congress. "It will depend on whether Iraq lets the inspectors in and its degree of cooperation."

Talks between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri over renewing inspections are planned for July. This will be the third stage in negotiations that resumed in March for the first time since 1998, when inspectors left after years of obstruction by Iraq.

US officials and experts are divided over whether Iraq will now cooperate with inspectors sufficiently to ensure that Iraq will not develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Iraq denies it is pursuing such weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Yet US intelligence as well as the accounts of Iraqi defectors suggest that the programs are alive and well, arms experts say.

One view, expressed emphatically by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials, is that Hussein is unlikely to abandon the pursuit of WMD. "It would have to be an enormously intrusive inspection regime for ... any reasonable person to have confidence that it could in fact find, locate, and identify the government of Iraq's very aggressive weapons of mass destruction program," Mr. Rumsfeld said in April.

He said past inspectors were "not able to find much, other than what defectors mentioned and cued them to." He contends, moreover, that Iraq has become "vastly more skillful" at hiding WMD.

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