Saddam Hussein

THE U.S. ACTED from humanitarian instincts in creating a zone in northern Iraq where Kurds might live unmolested by the government of Saddam Hussein. American aid was given and American lives risked. The State Department tried valiantly to broker an accord between the two rival Kurdish armies, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani, but failed.This U.S. trust was betrayed when Mr. Barzani invited the brutal Iraqi dictator to defeat the forces of Mr. Talabani, who had taken aid from Iran, leaving Mr. Barzani supreme in Iraqi Kurdistan.

OF COURSE the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) spied on Iraq. How else could it fulfill its mission?The organization of technical experts from several countries tried valiantly to discover Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and missile delivery systems. Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, threw every obstacle in its path.On its face, Iraq's spying charges were always true. That's why UNSCOM was created by the U.N. Security Council.But the spying charge was never a reason to drop UNSCOM or to end the sanctions that respond to the continued concealment of weapons of mass destruction.

DEALING with Iraq's tyrant, Saddam Hussein, does no involve a choice between force and diplomacy. Neither provides hope of restoring the arms inspection process without the other.In reneging on his commitments to the United Nations, ordering U.N. arms inspectors out of the country, Saddam Hussein is counting on his persistence and focus where foreign powers are fitful and anxious to move on. This crisis could have been ended years ago, with economic sanctions against Iraq lifted, had he allowed the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM)

NEW YORK - The artist known as Rowena admits her fantasy-art paintings - filled with snarling dragons, Fabio lookalikes and buxom damsels - can attract an offbeat clientele. But Saddam Hussein? The upstate New York painter was stunned to learn two of her campy, sexually charged artworks wound up at the tyrant's love shack in Baghdad. And now she wants her '80s-vintage paintings back - taloned serpents, bare-breasted babes and all. "I would give anything to get them back," said Rowena, whose last name is Morrill but prefers using only her first name.

Throughout a career that took him from hardscrabble wildcatter to wealthy oil tycoon, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. hasn't been the type to back down from a fight. So Monday's guilty plea to a federal conspiracy charge by the 83-year-old founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. surprised those familiar with his tenacity. "I am shocked by his decision to plead guilty," said David H. Berg, who represented Wyatt's brother-in-law, Houston clothier Robert T. Sakowitz, when the oilman sued him in the 1980s over some business deals.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Mohammed Akram Nakhalla, a Palestinian militant, died fighting Israeli soldiers when they entered this city two months ago. Yesterday, his relatives claimed their reward. In a ceremony at a YMCA hall, the leader of a marginal pro-Iraq group called the Arab Liberation Front gave the gunman's brother Samir a kiss on each cheek, a handshake and a certificate that read, "A generous gift from President Saddam Hussein to the family of the martyr of the al-Aqsa Intifada."

WASHINGTON - To the first President Bush, Joseph C. Wilson IV was America's rock-ribbed man in Baghdad whose in-your-face jousts with Saddam Hussein's thuggish regime in the tense buildup to the first Persian Gulf war Bush found "truly inspiring." But to the administration and supporters of the current President Bush, the now-retired diplomat is a nuisance, a man with an ax to grind when he helped discredit a key piece of evidence the White House used to build a case for the current gulf war. Wilson's disclosures have contributed to the worst embarrassment of the Bush presidency, one that has prompted mea culpas from the CIA director and deputy national security adviser, even as the United States struggles with the war's ragged and bloody aftermath.

BASRA, Iraq - The muezzin's call to prayer that sounded from the main mosque carried the same message of God's greatness heard around the Muslim world, but yesterday, in Iraq's second-largest city, all else had changed. For the first time in more than three decades, Shiite Muslims here worshipped without fear that agents of Saddam Hussein were listening. Many gathered outside the Jamia Imam al-Sadiq mosque, itself a potent symbol of repression, having been heavily damaged when Hussein's forces put down a Shiite uprising in 1991.

WASHINGTON -- Iraq yielded to threats of renewed military force yesterday and agreed to allow United Nations inspectors to search its Agriculture Ministry for materials involved in developing weapons of mass destruction.The agreement, announced by Rolf Ekeus, chairman of a U.N. commission on weapons destruction, defused the immediate possibility of allied air and missile attacks to make Iraq adhere to cease-fire terms of the Persian Gulf war.It came just a few hours after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the "mother of all battles" he had promised during the gulf war was not over.

WASHINGTON -- Americans, Iraqis and much of the world agree that Saddam Hussein should face a public trial. But when, where, who should preside, what specific crimes he might be charged with and whether to consider the death penalty all remained contentious yesterday. U.S. officials have said for months that bringing leaders of the deposed Iraqi regime to justice should be an "Iraqi-led process" rather than the kind of international tribunal that is trying former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide.