If the cost of rebuilding Kuwait is staggering, it pales next to the likely price tag for repairing Iraq. The bill there may be at least twice as expensive and the task fraught with far more uncertainties.

Allied bombing raids crippled Iraq's industrial and civil operations, demolishing as many as three-quarters of its power plants, refineries and water pumping stations, Middle East experts say.

The repair cost is expected to be $100 billion to $200 billion or more.

"There are a few small power stations left, but they're the ones which the allies did not bother to bomb," said Sabah (Simon) Kadhim, an Iraqi-born London businessman who is spearheading an effort to install a pro-Western government in Baghdad.

In addition, Iraq is facing another $150 billion to $200 billion in war debts and potential reparations from its two wars of the last 11 years. If Saddam Hussein continues in power, Western analysts say, it may take decades for Iraq to recover and reindustrialize.

"This is a bankrupt country with no source of income," said Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto. Hussein, he said, "is looking down the barrel of a dangerous economic gun."

Yet, Western experts say, if Hussein is forced out, a stable coalition government is installed and the United Nations lifts its trade embargo, Iraq may rise from the ashes in the same manner as Japan and Germany after World War II.

Though such a scenario does not appear likely today, it represents Iraq's best chance of persuading its creditors to forgive or restructure its massive debts, the analysts explain. If the debts and war claims are not forgiven, they could conceivably consume Iraq's oil-export earnings for decades.

With oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia, Iraq was one of the most prosperous countries in the Middle East until its eight-year war with Iran began in 1980. It produced more than 3 million barrels of oil a day before the U.N. trade embargo was imposed last August, making it the world's fourth-largest oil producer.

Following the Baath Party revolution in 1968, which ousted a military government, Iraq's socialist regime nationalized the oil industry and was soon awash in oil revenues. With a population of about 17 million living in an area slightly larger than California, Iraq had accumulated reserves of $35 billion by 1980.