Global Policy Forum

By Steven Lee Myers

Eighteen months after U.S. and British warplanes badly damaged its missile factories, Iraq has restarted its missile program and flight-tested a short- range ballistic missile, Clinton administration and U.S. military officials say.

The tests - eight in all, including one last Tuesday - have involved Al Samoud, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile that could carry conventional explosives or the chemical and biological weapons that Iraq is still suspected of hiding, the officials said. Because its range is less than 150 kilometers (95 miles), the missile does not violate UN restrictions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War of 1991. But the flight tests show that production plants and research labs destroyed in four nights of U.S. and British strikes in December 1998 have been rebuilt and have resumed work, the officials said.

The missile's range, shorter than that of the Russian-made Scud missiles that Iraq fired at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the war, does not pose a significant threat to Iraq's neighbors or U.S. forces in the Gulf, the officials said. But they view the testing as evidence that Iraq is still working to perfect its ballistic missile technology, which could be adapted to missiles with a longer range.

Iraq's program has intensified fears within the administration and the Pentagon that in the prolonged absence of international weapons inspectors, President Saddam Hussein may already be covertly working on, though not testing, longer-range missiles. Such work would violate the UN restrictions and would confront the United States with the difficult choice of how to respond.

''We're starting to see things up and functioning,'' General Anthony Zinni, commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf region, said in an interview before the most recent missile test. ''What he learns from these tests, the technological developments and the other things he picks up, are transferable to longer-range missiles. I mean it's not a stretch.''

The United States and Britain attacked Iraq in 1998 to punish Mr. Saddam's government for halting all cooperation with international inspectors searching for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as the missiles that can carry them. Iraq agreed to forsake those weapons as a condition for the ending of the Gulf War in 1991 by the United States and its allies. A significant number of the targets struck in the 1998 raids - 12 of 100 overall - were industrial and military factories involved in Iraq's missile program, including one in the Taji military complex north of Baghdad and the nearby Ibn Al Haytham missile research center, where the Al Samoud is made.

U.S. officials acknowledged earlier this year that Iraq had managed to rebuild many of the structures damaged or destroyed, but the extent of its missile program and its continued testing has not previously been disclosed. ''We never claimed it was permanent,'' a senior defense official said of the damage done 18 months ago. ''Whatever you can build, you can rebuild.''

Officials said the Al Samoud did not yet appear ready for deployment. They said their analysis of the tests - monitored by U.S. satellites, radars and aircraft patrolling the ''no flight'' zones over northern and southern Iraq - found significant problems with the missile. ''They have all kinds of problems with it,'' an official said. ''They can't get the guidance to work right. They can't get the engines to work right. It's not close to going into production, but they are persistent.'' Before the war, Iraq had many missiles, so presumably it still has the technology to build them, even though for a decade it has been proscribed from working on longer-range missiles, and from buying equipment.

The disclosure of the missile tests comes at a time when Washington's policy toward Iraq has faced intensifying international criticism; many people believe that the sanctions are punishing the Iraqi people, not Mr. Saddam's government. The administration's policy is also emerging as an issue in the presidential campaign between Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

''The word policy is probably an overstatement in describing the administration attitude toward Iraq,'' Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense and now an adviser to Mr. Bush's campaign, said to a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday. ''Paralysis is probably more appropriate.''

Since the attacks in 1998, there have been no international inspections of Iraq's weapons programs - and for months before there was little meaningful monitoring because of Iraq's refusal to cooperate. Earlier this year, the United States joined the other members of the UN Security Council in approving a new inspection system, but the system's new director, Hans Blix, has moved slowly to assemble a team of inspectors. And despite an offer to ease sanctions if the new inspections find no evidence of weapons programs, Iraq has insisted it will not cooperate with any new inspectors.