Regional Outlook : The Clinton Factor : Is Saddam Hussein preparing to test the mettle of the President-elect? Arab analysts say no; the present crisis targets Bush. But others aren't so sure.

By DAVID LAUTER

Jan. 12, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON — A generation ago, a young, relatively untried, new President came to office and immediately found himself plunged into foreign policy crises in which he was tested against an adversary who had bedeviled his predecessor.

Looking back on those confrontations between John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev over Berlin and Cuba, historians have emphasized the dangers that accompany the passing of presidential power from one person to the next. Khrushchev, they say, thought Kennedy might be weaker than Dwight D. Eisenhower and staged incidents to test how far he could push. Kennedy, for his part, may have been more willing to go to the brink of war simply in order to prove to the Soviet leader that he could not be intimidated.

In the early 1960s, that game of mutual testing brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. But over time, the relationship between the two leaders also led to the first arms agreements of the nuclear age.

Today, with the inauguration of a new, relatively untried President Bill Clinton just over a week away, a round of foreign policy trials looms once again. This time, the adversary who seems likely to test the abilities of the new President is Saddam Hussein. And from Baghdad to Jerusalem to Washington to Little Rock, analysts have spent considerable time in recent weeks guessing what will come of the relationship between the veteran leader of Iraq and the new arrival to the Oval Office.

The speculation has only heightened in the last few days as Hussein has seemed to go out of his way to provoke a new confrontation with the United States and its Gulf War allies. Hussein began by sending military aircraft into the “no-fly zone” that the United Nations has declared for southern Iraq. After U.S. planes shot down one of the Iraqi jets, Hussein moved missiles into the no-fly zone, leading to an ultimatum from President Bush that Iraq either remove the missiles or face renewed attack.

Over the weekend, the Iraqis complied with the order to move the missiles--although they publicly denied they were doing so. But just as it appeared that the crisis had been defused, Hussein ratcheted up the tension again, first refusing to allow a U.N. plane carrying a weapons inspection team to land in Baghdad and then staging two cross-border raids into the demilitarized zone separating Iraq from Kuwait, threatening U.N. troops and seizing weapons.

Those moves left analysts once again wondering what the Iraqi leader was trying and how far he would go.

“Saddam is trying to show that he has not weakened and that he is not giving up the south, which is the source of two-thirds of Iraq’s oil and its outlet to the (Persian) Gulf,” said Amatzia Baram, a senior lecturer at Israel’s Haifa University and a specialist on Iraq and Syria. “He thinks the time is ripe with the changing of the guard at the White House, given President-elect Clinton’s commitment to domestic affairs and because of America’s involvement in Somalia and possibly Bosnia.

“Saddam is anxious to avoid a military confrontation,” Baram added. “The question is how far Saddam is prepared to go and whether he will know when and where to stop.”

Arab analysts tend to view the latest events more as the end of a bitter chapter of personal enmity between Bush and Hussein than a precursor of worse times to come.

Hussein has clearly indicated that he hopes the inauguration of Clinton will lead to a change in the tensions of Iraq’s relationship with the United States under Bush.

Over the weekend, as Iraqi forces moved anti-aircraft missiles that had threatened U.S. warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone in the southern part of the country, Iraqi spokesmen blamed the whole incident on Bush. The President, the Iraqis insisted, had tried to create a clash as a way of embroiling Clinton in a foreign policy problem that was not of his own making.

Bush was trying to “burden President-elect Clinton with his policy, which is governed by personal reasons and motivated by unjustified hatred” for the Iraqi leadership, a government spokesman said in Baghdad. By contrast, “there is a possibility for dialogue” with Clinton’s team, the spokesman said. Iraqi newspapers, which generally reflect government thinking, made similar statements. Bush was trying to escalate tensions to tie Clinton’s hands, the newspaper Al-Jumhuriyah wrote.

Earlier, during the presidential campaign, Baghdad newspaper columnists actually praised Clinton at times, citing him for having roots in a poor and rural state.

But are those Iraqi statements signals that Hussein might truly seek peace with a new Administration, or is he merely trying to lure Clinton into abandoning the firm anti-Hussein position that Bush has taken? U.S. analysts, who have proven unsuccessful just about every time they have tried to predict what Hussein would do next, can only guess.

Nor have analysts much better a handle on how Clinton might deal with Hussein. During the presidential campaign, both supporters and opponents of Clinton tried to draw large conclusions about his attitude toward military action from events in his past--ranging from his opposition to the Vietnam War to his use of the National Guard against Cuban rioters while he was governor of Arkansas. But none of those events really shed much light on the question of how the new President might react to either an Iraqi challenge or a serious Iraqi peace overture.

So far, both Clinton’s team and the Bush Administration have strived to show the world, as Clinton said Friday, that “there is no daylight between our two positions.”

Spokesmen for both groups made a point of saying that Clinton had been “consulted” before Bush took his actions against Hussein last week--a marked change of language from last month, when Clinton aides and Bush spokesmen had taken pains to insist that Clinton had been “informed” of decisions Bush was taking, but nothing more.

Sunday, in an interview aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., Bush said, “I feel confident that President-elect Clinton feels the same way” he does about the need for Iraq to comply with U.N. demands.

Samuel Berger, Clinton’s nominee for deputy national security adviser, said in a televised interview on CNN that “there will be a fundamental continuity between the policy of a Clinton Administration and the policy of a Bush Administration on Iraq.”

Once Clinton takes the oath of office, however, the policy decisions will be his alone. And for both Clinton and Hussein, policy will be driven, as it always is, by both domestic and foreign concerns mixed with healthy doses of ego and emotion.

On the Iraqi side, Hussein has profited by his ability to stand up to Bush and the coalition arrayed against him. “Saddam needed to engage Bush in verbal battle one more time, in large part because he needed a platform to reinforce his perception of power at home,” one analyst said. “In effect, he was saying, ‘Look, I can still scare the world’s last superpower. The mother of battles goes on.’ ”

At the same time, however, two and a half years of war, international sanctions, oil embargoes and constant crises have depleted his military’s supply of spare parts and equipment and impoverished and exhausted his population.

Life in Baghdad has become a daily exercise in the problems of basic human survival, as hardships fuel inflation, frustration and silent dissent. Although effectively neutralized by the regime’s authoritarian security agencies and occasional executions of suspected offenders, most Iraqis confided as long ago as last November that popular anger with the regime deepens by the day.

Even Iraqi officials have spoken quietly of the hope that sanctions might end, allowing them to reopen trade relations, and they have dangled the possibility of negotiations with U.S. car manufacturers, grain suppliers, oil companies and such multinational giants as Bechtel Corp.

“Most Iraqis are hoping Saddam does take a softer line with Clinton,” said one Iraqi intellectual, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “Everyone is tired of this game. They’re tired of the bluster--on both sides.

“They’re tired of the sanctions. They’re tired of war. Everyone here just wants to live in peace, . . . (to) go back to business and have a chance to regain what little prosperity we once enjoyed.”

As for Clinton, he will face a multiplicity of conflicting pressures.

Reversing the pattern of Bush, who slighted domestic policy to free himself for foreign adventures, Clinton would very much like to calm foreign problems so that he can concentrate on the nation’s pressing domestic needs. And Iraq will be only one--and perhaps not even the greatest--of the foreign policy problems on an agenda that also includes the possibility of expanded war in the Balkans, the fate of U.S. troops in Somalia and the unending troubles of the nations of the former Soviet Union.

For all those reasons, Clinton might well jump at a chance to defuse tensions with Iraq, should Hussein offer such a chance.

But because he is a Democrat, because he never served in the armed forces, because he equivocated in his support for the Persian Gulf War and because he has very little foreign policy experience, Clinton comes into office with the press and public primed to doubt his toughness and skill in handling international bad guys.

During the campaign, Clinton won support from influential conservatives by portraying himself as a “different kind of Democrat” who, among other things, was not afraid to use force in international relations when needed. Since the election, however, at least some of the more prominent neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals who endorsed him have complained about his appointments and voiced fears that his Administration may repeat the mistakes of former President Jimmy Carter.

The neoconservatives do not directly sway many voters, but they are influential voices who could potentially cause Clinton considerable trouble if they begin to complain publicly that he is being weak-kneed in confronting Iraq.

Many of the neoconservative leaders have close ties to Israel, and the Israeli government could also create troubles for Clinton if he appears to be backing down.

For now, at least, Israeli officials and analysts voice considerably less concern about Hussein than they did before the Persian Gulf War.

“Saddam has much less incentive to hit Israel than he did in 1991, and he has far fewer missiles now than he did then. So the damage he could inflict is limited,” Haifa University’s Baram said. “But an attack would cost him dearly, and Saddam is aware of this.”

The consensus of Israeli intelligence, which continuously compares and shares its data and assessments with the United States, is that Hussein will try to test the new President, but he will not breach the unwritten “code of behavior”--challenge and confrontation.

At the same time, however, Israeli officials have made clear to their U.S. counterparts that unlike its conduct during the war, when Israel heeded U.S. entreaties and withheld retaliation against Iraqi missile attacks, in the future Israel again will be the sole judge of its security needs. Any threatening move by Iraq toward Israel will be dealt with by Israel, its officials say. And in that case, soon-to-be President Clinton may find himself along for the ride.

Times staff writers Mark Fineman in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Michael Parks in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

What They Say

Some Iraqis are fans of Bill Clinton, figuring anyone would be better than Gulf War nemesis George Bush; others are skeptical. But Clinton is no fan of Saddam Hussein or his regime. Some selected quotes:

FROM CLINTON

“Basically, (Hussein is) one of those people you give him an inch and he takes a mile. . . . We’re just going to have to be very firm.”

July, 1992. Comments to reporters in Seattle

“I essentially support what the Administration is now doing through the United Nations, trying to turn up the heat on Saddam. . . . But I think that dealing with him and with some of the other dictators in the world who are rushing to develop . . . weapons of mass destruction will be a monthly trial for the next President . . . and I wouldn’t rule out military action.”

August, 1992. Interview with The Times

“Saddam Hussein is mistaken if he believes the United States or the United Nations lack that resolve (to ensure compliance with U.N. resolutions).”

December, 1992. Statement issued after U.S. shot down Iraqi jet in “no-fly zone”

“Our people are enforcing the no-fly zone, and that’s exactly what they should be doing. And our resolve is not going to weaken during this period of transition.”

December, 1992. Comments to reporters in Savannah, Ga.

FROM IRAQIS

“Bush didn’t understand Iraq and the Arab nation. The others should comprehend (this) after the experiences which took place. Those experiences should be taken as a lesson.”

November, 1992. Saddam Hussein, in TV broadcast after Bush lost to Clinton

“We don’t know Clinton. But we know Bush. Bush bombed our factories, our buildings, our bridges. Bush, well, he is the devil for me.”

November, 1992. Baghdad barber Saddiq Mahmud, in pre-election interview

“I will just dance in the streets if Clinton wins.”

November, 1992. Shopkeeper Haider Abbas, in pre-election interview

“The American Administration will continue its hostile policies against the Arabs. And Clinton has gone so far as to announce he will support the Israeli state unconditionally.”

November, 1992. Hussein’s eldest son, Uday, writing in his newspaper