HIDDEN KILLERS

By Bruce W. Nelan

Saddam Hussein seems to have decided he would rather be bombed than inspected. Or the Iraqi dictator may believe he is crafty enough to avoid both those fates. But of the two, U.N. weapons inspections have obviously damaged him much more since the Gulf War than the occasional pinpricks he has absorbed from U.S. cruise missiles. For six years Saddam and his officials have lied, threatened and concealed everything they could to keep the U.N. Special Commission from finding and destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, chemical and biological. He still has some of them stashed away, but the inspectors were burrowing ever closer to the last, most secret hiding places, and it looked as if they would never give up. Hence Saddam's decision to risk bombs to put the inspectors out of business.

U.S. spokesmen like to say they have Saddam "in a box," but this time he had Bill Clinton on the spot. If Iraq kept the inspectors from doing their jobs, how would the U.N. respond? Among the veto-holding members of the Security Council, Russia and France opposed using any more military force on Iraq, and Russia was reluctant to tighten economic sanctions. If the Security Council did not act against Saddam, the U.S. could attack by itself, blasting Iraq with cruise missiles again to avoid getting pilots killed or captured. But that kind of attack could turn out to be another pinprick, or result in civilian casualties that would infuriate U.S. allies and the Arab world.

Technically, Iraq barred only American members of the inspection teams from carrying on their work, but all the inspectors stayed off the job. Iraq took advantage of the hiatus, shuffling equipment around and blinding surveillance cameras.

That was nothing new. The Iraqis have been cheating outrageously on the truce agreement that ended the war in 1991. They have hidden documents, moved missiles and machines, thwarted the inspectors with everything from rifle shots in the air to a fusillade of rotten vegetables. In spite of all that, the weapons experts have compiled a record of real achievement over the years. They have essentially dismantled Iraq's nuclear- weapons industry and accounted for the great majority of its Scud missiles. They have uncovered vast stocks of chemical agents and have been trying hard to find Saddam's germ-warfare arsenal. But they still have a lot of work to do in all those categories of weapons:

BIOLOGICAL These are the inspectors' biggest worry right now. Before the Gulf War the Iraqis had a secret germ-weapon program that brewed up and tested huge quantities of several lethal agents, including 8,500 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinus and 2,500 liters of aflatoxin. (That's theoretically enough to kill everyone on earth.) They had "weaponized" them by loading them into bombs and missile warheads. Iraq claims it unilaterally destroyed all those weapons after the war, but has never offered proof. U.N. inspectors have been checking more than 80 suspected areas for clandestine storage of the killer bugs and recently have been trying to get into presidential offices and Republican Guard and intelligence bases where some bioweapons may be concealed. Richard Butler, executive chairman of the Special Commission, thinks the Iraqis may have raised the latest roadblock to the inspectors because they were getting close to their target.

CHEMICAL Saddam was mass-producing mustard gas and nerve gases before the war and had stockpiled VX, a terrifyingly deadly agent. He had also developed prototype artillery shells, rockets and bombs filled with sarin, which proved its effectiveness in a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Between 1991 and 1994, the Special Commission supervised the destruction of 690 tons of chemical-warfare agents and more than 3,000 tons of "precursor" chemicals that could be used to make poisons. The inspectors believe Iraq still has hidden as much as 4,000 tons of precursors. They note that the Iraqis are even now running a research and development program and could go back to producing chemical weapons as soon as the inspectors depart.

NUCLEAR Before the war, Saddam had been pressing ahead fast at 10 sites, and some analysts believe he was within months of acquiring at least a rudimentary atom bomb. The inspectors believe they have dismantled the program, but some of its weapons components and equipment have never been recovered. The secret overseas purchasing operation Saddam set up before the war is still functioning, and it could be put to work to buy and import nuclear technology.

MISSILE SYSTEMS Most of Iraq's long-range missiles have been scrapped, but the lies and deception that cloud biological and chemical weapons are at work here too. Iraq is trying to rebuild its ballistic missile program through a network of front companies that buy materials and technology in Europe and Russia. In a report last month, the U.N. Special Commission found that Iraq "continued to conceal documents describing its missile propellants," and the evidence indicated that "it might have destroyed less than a tenth of what it claimed." And, of course, there are no restrictions on Iraq's development of short-range missiles or cruise missiles, which can easily carry biological or chemical warheads.

No matter how tempting it might be to blow away Saddam's Republican Guard or some of his secret police headquarters, the Clinton Administration was hoping it would not come to that. The real issue here could not be more serious: weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a regime prepared to use them. A few, or even a large number, of bombing runs cannot take them completely out of Saddam's hands. But if the inspectors keep working, they will be able to finish the job of purging Iraq of those weapons. That is what Washington wants most of all. It is what Saddam is willing to take big risks to avoid.

--Reported by William Dowell/New York, Dean Fischer and Mark Thompson/Washington and Scott MacLeod/Paris

With reporting by WILLIAM DOWELL/NEW YORK, DEAN FISCHER AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON AND SCOTT MACLEOD/PARIS