Albright Says U.S. Prepared To Act Alone In Punishing Iraq Other Officials Say Military Strikes May Be Averted

On the eve of a diplomatic mission to Europe and the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on Wednesday that the United States was ready to act alone, if necessary, to punish Iraq for its attempts to develop chemical and biological weapons.

“I am not going anywhere to seek support,” she said at a news conference at the State Department only hours before departing on the weeklong trip. “I am going to explain our position.”

But even as Albright reiterated the blunt warning President Clinton delivered in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, officials at the White House and the Pentagon sought to stamp out expectations that military strikes against Iraq were imminent or inevitable.

In a meeting at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said the administration had not yet decided whether to strike Iraq, according officials who were present. One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that, although the Pentagon continually refines potential targets, the White House has not yet settled on a military strategy that would accomplish the primary goal.

“We’d like to think we could stop bombing and Saddam Hussein would throw his hands up and ask the United Nations inspectors back in, but no one believes it,” the official said.

After several days of intensifying warnings to Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, Albright still left open the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough that would allow U.N. inspections of Iraqi weapons programs to resume without restrictions on access to sensitive sites.

Albright’s trip will include stops in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, which have been wary of overtly supporting military action by the United States. Her visit is to be followed by another trip next week by Cohen, leaving plenty of time for a last-minute resolution that would avert military confrontation.

An administration official said the White House still hoped the strong warnings to be delivered by the two secretaries would persuade the Iraqi leader to back down, as he has before.

Albright warned, however, that the “diplomatic string” was running out and that Iraq appeared “determined to thwart” a diplomatic solution in its latest showdown with the United States and the United Nations over the inspections.

Military commanders at the Pentagon have already drawn up a detailed series of options for striking Iraq in what would very likely be a broad, prolonged attack on Saddam’s Republican Guards and on the sites thought to house chemical and biological weapons, officials said.

One Pentagon official said that while the administration’s ultimate goal was to thwart Iraq’s ability to make weapons of mass destruction, military force alone was unlikely to accomplish that. At the State Department, Albright said the threats of force were “intended to coerce” Saddam to comply with the U.N. resolutions imposed after the Persian Gulf War.

The United States already has significant firepower in the region, including 300 fighters and bombers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain and aboard two aircraft carriers plying the Persian Gulf, the Nimitz and the George Washington.

Those include six F-117 Stealth fighters in Kuwait, two B-1 bombers in Bahrain and six B-52’s at Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean. The American fleet in the Gulf - which has been joined by a British aircraft carrier, the Invincible - also includes nine ships able to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles deep into Iraq.

Even as diplomatic maneuvers continue, President Clinton has received strong support in Congress for mounting an attack.

The Senate majority leader, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., announced that both the House and Senate would pass a resolution calling on Clinton “to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction.”

It is expected to pass easily as soon as today.