Itching for A Fight

Patience may have finally run out. The U.N. inspection team that had been parked round the clock outside Iraq's Agriculture Ministry for 17 days, waiting to search for missile documents believed to be stashed inside, abandoned its mission. Faced with menacing mob demonstrations that included peltings with eggs and tomatoes, tire slashings and an attempted assault with a skewer, the inspectors retreated, empty-handed.

The sudden withdrawal immediately prompted an angry exchange of threats between Washington and Baghdad and frantic negotiations at U.N. headquarters in New York City to seek Iraqi compliance. By week's end the U.S., Britain and other allies were careering toward another showdown with Iraq. Shore leave in the Mediterranean for crew members of the aircraft carrier Saratoga was canceled, President Bush met with top defense advisers, and officials in several Western capitals huddled to phrase an ultimatum.

Western analysts are worried that Saddam Hussein, recently reported to have put down a revolt of his own senior officers, is itching to pick a fight with the outside world to prove he's in control despite the debilitating international embargo and the presence of the U.N. arms inspectors. He has defied demands for information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, refused to renew an agreement allowing relief workers to operate in Iraq, spurned a U.N. deal that would allow him to sell $1.6 billion in oil to finance food and humanitarian aid, and rejected a new U.N.-demarcated border with Kuwait. He has even stepped up operations against Shi'ite Muslim rebels in the south. In Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq, gun, grenade and car-bomb attacks have targeted U.N. guards, one of whom was killed. Saddam blames the Kurds, but the U.N. rejects that claim and says he is responsible for protecting its personnel in any case.

Saddam's taunts are aimed at eroding the coalition's resolve. But Western officials insist they are having the opposite effect. They say Saddam's gamble that Europe is too distracted by the Yugoslav quagmire and President Bush too immobilized by his tough re-election fight to risk military action is a grave miscalculation. "If Saddam does not quickly comply with U.N. demands," says a senior British diplomat, "an attack is almost certainly on. We are not going to wait long." (See related story on page 49.)