By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 24, 1997; Page A01

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Nizar Hamdoon, said yesterday his government still does not recognize the right of U.N. inspection teams to enter certain sites inside Iraq, provoking senior U.S. officials to say that the dispute between Iraq and the international organization has not ended.

At issue is whether the U.N. inspectors who reentered Iraq on Friday can visit sites claimed by the Iraqis to be associated with President Saddam Hussein, including his villas and residences. U.N. officials have suspected for two years that Iraqi security and intelligence officials are using such sites to conceal illicit items related to Iraqi missiles or its past production of poison gases and germ warfare.

U.N. inspection teams have repeatedly been turned away from "presidential" sites in the past, a circumstance that provoked a series of tense showdowns and provided a backdrop to Iraq's effort last week to win international support for blocking all U.S. participation in inspections.

Iraq's claim was rebuffed on Saturday when a commission advisory group, composed of experts and diplomats representing 15 countries, supported Washington's position and called for "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted" access by the inspectors to any sites in Iraq.

But Hamdoon, appearing yesterday on three U.S. television networks, reiterated his government's position that the United Nations had no right to inspect "presidential" sites, on grounds that doing so would violate Iraqi security, sovereignty and dignity. Hamdoon had warned on Saturday that in "weeks or months, we could get back into a similar" showdown if the world body makes such an inspection demand.

Speaking on Fox's "News Sunday" program, Hamdoon said allowing U.N. officials to visit presidential sites in Iraq was comparable to allowing international inspections of the White House or Congress. He also said the United Nations has never produced any evidence that weapons of mass destruction are stored at such sites.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, taking an equally rigid position, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Iraq's obstruction of U.N. inspections at sensitive sites "cannot continue" and that Iraq's "pattern of deception and lies, deceits and coverups" must end. He said the inspectors must be able to visit "all of the sites where they suspect there may be illegal activity taking place."

Cohen said that in the event of another confrontation, the administration still prefers to pursue "every last possible diplomatic solution." But he also gave no indication that Washington is considering withdrawing any of the extra U.S. military forces sent to the Persian Gulf in the past week, including a second aircraft carrier battle group, Stealth fighters, and B-52 and B-1 bombers.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, also speaking on the Fox program, warned that "this crisis isn't over just because they allowed the inspectors back in. We want to make sure that there's full compliance."

Another showdown could occur within the next week or so if Iraqi officials try to block a U.N. visit to one of the presidential sites, according to several diplomatic sources. Some U.N. and diplomatic officials are urging Richard Butler, the commission chairman, to attempt an inspection of such a site soon so they can test Iraq's position while the world's attention remains focused on the country, the sources said.

Butler said on "Meet the Press" that "we need access to a whole range of sites, persons and documents in Iraq" but did not indicate which sites the inspection teams plan to visit first. He also cast the dispute as a test of wills with broad importance, calling the monitoring of Iraq a test case for international efforts to guarantee "a more civilized life" without weapons of mass destruction "around every corner."

Charles Duelfer, a U.S. diplomat serving as the commission's deputy director, also declined to speculate about how soon a new confrontation might arise, but said, "We intend to conduct business as we have in the past, using the full range of inspection techniques and including all sites that we need to inspect."

Iraq has never given the commission a list of all the sites it considers "presidential," causing U.N. officials to suspect that Iraq wants the right to apply that label to any place it is storing illicit materials. At one site visited by an inspection team on short notice in June, Iraq barred the inspectors from entering but could not keep them from observing suspicious material being hidden inside a presidential villa by Iraqi troops.

Since March 1996, U.N. officials say, the commission's teams have been blocked from entering 14 sites Iraq claimed were presidential or "sensitive" and have been delayed -- sometimes for hours -- from entering another 38 similarly labeled sites. Hamdoon yesterday defended these actions, claiming that the commission had agreed in June that its teams would not seek to enter presidential sites.

But U.N. officials said yesterday that under procedures worked out with the commission in June, Iraq is obligated to allow access to any such sensitive sites, so long as the United Nations meets two major conditions: It must limit the number of personnel it sends inside and allow a senior Iraqi official to escort the inspectors.

On Saturday, the commission's advisory committee also urged the United Nations to "broaden the multinational nature of inspection teams." This was the committee's only step in the direction of Iraq's allies at the U.N. -- principally Russia and France -- that have complained of excessive U.S. representation on the commission staff.

But Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said the United States would welcome adding more experts to the commission staff as a way of allowing it "to really do its work." Other U.S. officials have cautioned, however, that Iraqi officials want Russian or French experts added to the staff -- particularly as the chiefs of various inspection teams -- because Iraq hopes these governments will tip it off to plans for surprise inspections.

Meanwhile, White House officials said yesterday that President Clinton, who over the weekend was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vancouver, British Columbia, had sent Russian President Boris Yeltsin a long written message to press the U.S. case that Iraq remains a serious threat to international security and does not deserve to have sanctions loosened.

The message consisted of a two-page letter and four pages of fact sheets summarizing U.N. reports and classified U.S. data on Iraq's arsenal. White House officials hinted that Clinton's decision stemmed from concern that Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who has long been friendly with Saddam Hussein, might not be keeping Yeltsin fully informed about Iraq's weapons and its record of deception.

"He thinks it's very important that Yeltsin himself sees personally the kinds of conclusions" Washington has reached, said deputy national security adviser James B. Steinberg.

Staff writer Peter Baker in Vancouver contributed to this report.