Seeking to regain the initiative, President Bush announced that he had reached an agreement with House leaders on a resolution authorizing him to use force if President Saddam Hussein refuses to abandon his efforts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear arms.

The move seemed intended to show the United Nations that the president has the support of numerous American lawmakers and is prepared to take military action on his own if the Security Council is reluctant to act.

But Iraq has taken a weak hand and played it effectively. Its decision on Tuesday to accept inspection served as a pre-emptive diplomatic strike to try to head off a pre-emptive American military campaign.

Iraq's objective, in effect, appears to be to ensure that the inspection arrangements are as weak as possible before admitting international monitors, while acquiescing to inspections as a way to forestall an American attack.

For Baghdad, United Nations weapons inspectors are the new "human shields." As long as they are actively working on Iraqi territory it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the Bush administration to mount its military campaign to remove Mr. Hussein.

"The Iraqi game plan is to water down the Security Council inspection resolution as much as possible," said Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior official on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "At the end of the day there is a very good chance that Iraq will accept whatever resolution the Security Council passes because they know that the alternative is war. Once they accept the inspectors the Iraqis will try to do just enough to avoid an open violation and play for time."

Washington, on the other hand, is trying to resolve the issue of Iraq's compliance with inspections as quickly as possible so that if it comes to war, military action can be taken this winter. If the inspections are stymied, as the White House expects, the United States would be able to attack when the cooler temperatures make it easier for American troops to operate in bulky chemical gear and the longer nights enable them to take advantage of their night vision equipment.

Toward this end, the Bush administration has put together a draft resolution that essentially front-loads the requirements on Iraq: Iraq has to provide a sweeping declaration of its weapons of mass destruction program within 30 days before unrestricted inspections begin.

For Iraq, dragging out the inspections for as long as possible could avoid a winter window for war.

Iraq's announcement in Vienna that it is planning for the return of the inspectors strengthened its position in several respects. The move was intended to signal that Iraq was prepared to cooperate with the existing United Nations inspection procedures and thus appeared intended to fortify French and Russian opposition to the American push in the United Nations Security Council to stiffen the terms of inspections.

It also put Washington in the difficult position of having to explain why it was not prepared to take the Iraqi "yes" for an answer.

Divisions within the Bush administration gave Iraq the opening. Throughout the summer, there were deep differences within the Bush administration about whether to proceed with a military campaign to topple Mr. Hussein or first issue an ultimatum that United Nations inspectors be readmitted.

Months went by without a clear answer as to which course the Bush administration would take. Even when President Bush addressed the United Nations on Sept. 12, he did not say whether Washington had decided to make another run at inspections. Not until last week did the Bush administration succeed in hammering out a new resolution and presenting it to France and Russia.

In the interim, Iraq agreed to accept the return of inspectors but under the terms of the old Security Council resolutions that limited access to presidential sites. A former United Nations weapons inspector said that the Bush administration could have foreclosed this move by announcing weeks ago that it planned to go ahead with toughened inspections and then outlining the criteria.

"Within the framework of the Security Council, Iraq has a tactical advantage," a former United Nations inspector said. "The Bush administration should have set out a high standard of what is required months ago. Then the Iraqis would have had to react to that."

The Bush administration still has a good chance of securing a new Security Council resolution, though it may have to drop its insistence that the measure authorize military force if Baghdad fails to comply, leaving that for future deliberation.

To strengthen Washington's hand, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell put the United Nations on notice on Tuesday that the Security Council needed to outline tougher inspection procedures before its monitors could resume their work in Iraq.

Over the long run, Mr. Hussein's position is not an enviable one. Unless the character of Mr. Hussein's government changes significantly, it will be difficult for Iraq to comply with intrusive inspections, giving the Bush administration the provocation it is seeking.

In the short term, however, the Bush administration needs to mobilize Security Council support to make the inspections as demanding as possible, and Iraq's recent efforts have made that more complicated.

"The United States has not lost the chance for a second resolution, but it will have to move quickly and make some compromises to pass something in the next couple of weeks," Mr. Samore said.

(China Daily October 4, 2002)