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By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday, December 8, 1998; 1:57 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON — A top White House official said Tuesday the United States would work step by step with foes of Saddam Hussein to bring down the Iraqi president.

"Our policy toward Iraq is to contain Saddam, but also to oppose him," said Sandy Berger, assistant to President Clinton for national security affairs.

Acknowledging a series of crises over Iraq's "cheat and retreat" stand on U.N. weapons inspections was costly in terms of a U.S. military buildup and maintaining alliances, Berger said the administration had to go beyond a standoff with Iraq.

"We cannot tolerate it endlessly," Berger said in a speech prepared for delivery at a Stanford University program marking publication of former Secretary of State Warren Christopher's memoirs.

"The longer this standoff continues, the harder it will be to maintain the international support we have built for our policy," the White House official said. "Even the toughest of all sanctions regimes in history becomes harder to sustain over time."

In his policy speech, Berger did not say whether the Clinton administration would use force to try to topple the Iraqi leader.

It is already committed to providing opposition groups with surplus U.S. military equipment, and Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk has met with opposition leaders.

Some critics of U.S. policy on Iraq contend Saddam emerges from his periodic confrontations stronger politically.

Berger did not agree, but he also did not claim Saddam had been weakened, either. Blocking him "leaves him no better off in the end," he said.

In the most recent crisis, Clinton on Nov. 14 called off a missile attack on Iraq after Saddam offered to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to resume their work.

"By bombing after Saddam agreed to the world's demands, we would have lost our moral high ground," Berger said. "The issue would have shifted from his intransigence to our overzealousness."

Still, Berger said, change in Iraq is necessary. "Saddam's history of aggression and his recent record of deception and defiance leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance," Berger said.

As a result, the White House official said, "what we can and will do is to strengthen the Iraqi opposition and support the Iraqi people, to work with them step by step, in a practical way to delegitimize Saddam, and then, when the time is right, to help them achieve a new leadership in Iraq."