対米全面テロ

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON The Bush administration is stepping up its efforts to destabilize the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials say they are seeking to carry out President Bush's policy of "regime change." The evidence:

・U.S. diplomats and CIA officers in recent months have visited northern Iraq, an area protected by U.S. and British military overflights. "Our assessment is that this administration is much more serious than before," said Mohammad Sabir, the U.S. representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, an Iraqi Kurdish faction.

・The administration plans to fund a meeting of several hundred Iraqi military defectors in Europe in March or April. Officials of the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition movement, said they would convene the meeting. But a senior State Department official said the Iraqi group would not act as the host.

Meanwhile, two experts on Iraq outside the government say the CIA already is implementing a new covert plan to topple Saddam, who has ruled Iraq for more than two decades. One of them, a former top CIA official who maintains contacts at the agency, says President Bush approved the plan three weeks ago.

Neither the White House nor the CIA would confirm Wednesday that such a plan exists.

The administration's focus on Iraq comes as the war on terrorism in Afghanistan winds down and efforts accelerate to target al-Qaeda members in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia and elsewhere.

In his State of the Union speech last month, Bush called Iraq - along with Iran and North Korea - part of an "axis of evil" and said it would not be permitted to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The Pentagon is working on other options that would involve the use of up to 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. But a covert plan, if successful, would entail fewer if any U.S. casualties. It also would arouse less opposition among Iraq's neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, which fear that a massive U.S. invasion would further inflame anti-U.S. sentiment.

The CIA has tried to have Saddam overthrown in the past. In 1996, more than 100 Iraqis died when Saddam briefly invaded the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The Clinton administration did not provide military support to the Iraqi opposition forces, and CIA officers had to flee for their lives.

This time, the CIA plans to arm Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and to train and arm Shiite Muslims in the south, the former CIA official said.

Others who say they are familiar with the plan said it would also encourage defections within the Iraqi military.

Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that because Americans cannot gain easy access to central Iraq, the CIA might use foreign technical advisers to recruit Iraqi defectors.

Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service said toppling Saddam would be "a very difficult thing to do." But others said the Iraqi leader's regime is too dangerous to leave in place.

"The issue is not whether Iraq has yet achieved nuclear weapons or extremely lethal biological weapons," Cordesman told a Senate committee Wednesday. The regime will acquire those weapons "if it is given the time and opportunity to do so." A CIA covert plan to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would rely on help from Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south, regional experts say.

02/27/2002 - Updated 11:49 PM ET

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