By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 16, 1998; Page A20

AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 15 – Calls for a diplomatic solution to the Iraq crisis bounded around the Middle East today as leaders anticipated a yet-unscheduled visit by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to Baghdad.

A visit by the top U.N. diplomat has come to be regarded throughout the region as the last chance to avert air strikes on Iraq by U.S. and British bombers massed in the Persian Gulf region. No one on any side of the conflict seems to oppose the visit, although opinions diverge on just what it would take to defuse the crisis.

Washington and London are demanding unimpeded access by U.N arms inspectors to suspected storage and production sites for chemical and biological weapons. Iraq wants to alter the makeup of the inspection teams and limit their access.

In Baghdad, the government of President Saddam Hussein hosted a three-member U.N. map-making team that arrived to survey eight presidential complexes that arms inspectors think may be storage or production sites for chemical and biological weapons. The Iraqis seemed eager to display cooperation but also to indicate that the survey was a limited exercise, designed to lay the groundwork for a visit by Annan.

Iraqi helicopters ferried the U.N. team over the palaces and officials permitted ground visits for mapping purposes, Iraqi officials said.

The mission is meant to "prepare the information about the presidential sites . . . how many acres, are they surrounded by fences, to prepare the maps. So when the secretary general arrives, he will find precise information. That's all," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf.

At the same time, Iraq insisted that inspections are unnecessary, saying that its biological and chemical weapons as well as missiles to deliver them have long been eliminated.

"The facts are that Iraq declared those weapons [to the United Nations] and Iraq destroyed them," said Gen. Amir Saadi, an Iraqi presidential adviser.

Every day brings new confirmation that the alliance that staunchly supported the U.S.-led bombing of Iraq in 1991 and the subsequent freeing of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation has disintegrated. Most of the Middle East partners in the Persian Gulf War are now pressing for a peaceful outcome of the present crisis.

The defense minister of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, said, "We do not agree to attack Iraq" because of possible civilian casualties.

Saudi Arabia's defense minister, Prince Sultan, reiterated his government's refusal to let American planes use Saudi bases to launch air raids.

Here, Jordanian officials repeatedly expressed hope that bombing will not be necessary. Jordan has a complex relationship with Iraq: It depends on its ostracized neighbor for oil supplies. Today, the Jordanians signed a $225 million barter deal with Iraq, under which it will trade soap, cooking oil and other household goods for fuel.

Jordan is exempt from U.N. prohibitions on trade with Iraq. The arid kingdom has been cut off from its main supplier, Saudi Arabia, since the Gulf War because King Hussein did not wholeheartedly condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Iraq also offers Jordan more favorable prices than Persian Gulf states that might also be willing to fill its fuel needs.