WASHINGTON — Buoyed by early reports of battlefield triumphs, senior Bush Administration officials Sunday for the first time sketched out extensive allied plans to seize and hold Iraqi territory as part of a strategy to force fundamental changes in Baghdad's government.
Key to that strategy, military sources say, is a drive deep into Iraq aimed at seizing control of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and a strategic military center, as well as major points along the Euphrates River, the historic waterway that separates southern Iraq from the central part of the country.
Officials indicated they also intend to maintain economic sanctions on Iraq after the fighting ends to compel Baghdad to accept allied terms for ending the Gulf crisis.
The emerging allied strategy, coupled with the public statements by Administration officials Sunday, are the most direct evidence yet that one unofficial aim of the allied coalition is to force Saddam Hussein out of power.
Hussein "has demonstrated time and time again his character, and that is not compatible with a peaceful world," National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said. Scowcroft reiterated the official policy--that allied forces "have not made" eliminating Hussein a "goal for the success of the operation."
But he made clear that ending Hussein's rule will "absolutely" be the allied coalition's preference.
Bush and allied leaders hope that a combination of a devastating Iraqi military defeat, continued sanctions and allied occupation of a large sector of southern Iraq will provide enough leverage to force Iraq to sue for peace on allied terms, terms that are incompatible with continued rule by Hussein.
"One does not see how Saddam Hussein will mend his ways," French President Francois Mitterrand said Sunday in a Paris press conference. After an Iraqi military defeat, "the political authority and the military authority of Saddam Hussein would be considerably affected," Mitterrand said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney insisted that the allied coalition has "no interest in occupying Iraq," but he acknowledged that allied officials "have also said that there won't be any sanctuary inside Iraq for those forces who've been involved in occupying Kuwait."
And the broad goal of reshaping Iraq's government is part of what Secretary of State James A. Baker III referred to as the coalition's "political aims," as distinct from the more narrow "war aims" of liberating Kuwait and restoring its government.
