NEWS ANALYSIS : Hussein Trying to Buy Time, Divide the Allies : Strategy: The maneuver to stave off a ground war and spare Iraqi forces won’t work, U.S. officials insist.

On the brink of having to fight a ground war that he finally realized he could not win, Saddam Hussein has embarked on a last-ditch effort to generate negotiations that he hopes will buy him time and ensure the survival of his army and his regime.

And U.S. officials and Middle East analysts believe that his government’s offer Friday to withdraw from Kuwait--hedged with conditions Hussein knew Washington would instantly reject--was designed to entice the Soviet Union into serving as a wedge to split the coalition arrayed against Baghdad in the Persian Gulf. Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, scheduled to be in Moscow this weekend, will invite the Kremlin to play a mediator’s role and bypass the United States, they predicted.

Yet prospects for success of the Iraqi maneuver are highly uncertain. And even if Hussein’s proposal was intended as the opening ploy in a longer diplomatic gambit, it may not stave off a U.S.-led ground war against his war machine in Kuwait.

“Unless he eliminates his conditions, there will be a ground war. He has not bought any additional time,” a Pentagon official said. “We ought to know within the next couple of days just how serious Saddam is.”

“It’s too little, too late,” said Augustus Richard Norton of the International Peace Academy’s new program on Gulf security.

President Bush declared publicly that absolutely no compromise is possible on the U.N. Security Council’s terms for ending the war.

“Saddam either has to back off his conditions or the war will continue,” a senior Administration official said. “There will be no compromise, no discussion of linkage” to other Mideast issues.

“And we will decide when we pull out, not Saddam,” the official added, dismissing Hussein’s demand that an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait be matched by a pullout of all foreign forces from the Gulf.

“We’ve never put it past Hussein to put out a peace overture and to try to split the coalition,” a White House official said, declaring that Hussein sought to divide the coalition by “trying to build” on Wednesday’s tragic bombing of a fortified Iraqi structure in which more than 300 civilians were killed.

“We don’t think this is going to help him,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Moreover, the allies have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to withstand Hussein’s efforts to divide them. And the Administration is applying intense pressure on Moscow to hold firm when Foreign Minister Aziz visits Moscow this weekend, following up on a visit to Baghdad earlier this week by Soviet envoy Yevgeny M. Primakov.

“The coalition all along has proven to be more resilient than was expected, or than Saddam anticipated,” a senior U.S. official said. “In virtually every aspect--political, military or economic--its unity has confounded its critics.”

The International Peace Academy’s Norton said: “Unless Saddam surprises everyone by coming up with a serious proposal, a real proposal which recognizes that he’s not going to be granted a simultaneous Israeli withdrawal (from the West Bank and Gaza Strip) or a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, then his statements are no more than frantic gestures. And Arab governments are going to recognize that.”

As for Moscow, a ranking Administration official expressed “concern” Friday that the Kremlin may feel it has “an investment” in mediating the Gulf crisis at the expense of honoring its commitment to support U.N. resolutions demanding an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

A senior Administration official confirmed Friday night that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a message to Bush this week, asked that a ground war against Iraqi troops in Kuwait be delayed until the Soviet diplomatic initiative for a peaceful solution be given a chance. The official would not provide any details of the request, but did say that a New York Times report that the Administration had agreed to a delay until after Soviet-Iraqi meetings this weekend “is not all correct.”

Still, other U.S. officials doubt that Moscow will sell out the coalition. White House officials dismissed Hussein’s move as “an attempt to show the world he’s working something with the Soviets, to split the Soviets off.”

But “the Soviets are pretty solidly in line,” one official said.

“Because of what is happening inside the Soviet Union, the Soviets cannot afford to compromise on their commitment to the U.N. resolutions,” Judith Kipper, a Mideast scholar at the Brookings Institution, said.

Added Geoffrey Kemp, a Mideast specialist who served on the Reagan Administration’s National Security Council: “I doubt the Soviets will do anything to drive too wide a wedge between the United States and its European allies.

“The Soviet Union needs American help and friendship to deal with the horrendous problems back home. If they screw up things in the Gulf, we could make life miserable for them, especially in the Baltics,” he said.

Indeed, Kemp and some others predicted that Hussein’s unexpected diplomatic initiative marks a critical turning point in the six-month crisis even if it fails.

With Hussein now acknowledging he must leave Kuwait, Kemp said, “this is the beginning of the end.”

Riad Ajami, a political economist who surveyed Iraq last year, agreed. “Saddam is raising up his arms and saying uncle,” he said. “His fighting capability has been decimated. At this moment, he will have to stop to preserve whatever he has left.”

Under the best of circumstances, however, closing the wide gap between Iraq’s heavily qualified offer and the U.N. demand for its unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait will involve time and diplomacy so delicate that a ground war may still not be avoided.

The Iraqi leader may also hope the offer will play to public opinion within the Arab, Islamic and Third worlds and put pressure on such countries as Pakistan and Morocco, whose participation in the coalition has been increasingly controversial at home.

The timing of the offer also came just two days after U.S. warplanes blew up with heavy loss of civilian lives a building claimed by the allies to have been a military communications center and by Baghdad to have been an air raid shelter.

“In deciphering the Iraqis’ motives, you’re back in that either/or situation: Either they’re looking for a face-saving way out, or they see a possibility of exploiting fissures in the coalition,” a State Department official said. “So far, they still have both options.”

India, which is not a member of the allied coalition, called for an immediate cease-fire. An Iranian official called the Iraqi proposal “a step toward peace.” In Algeria, 30,000 people marched through the capital to protest the structure bombing. And Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi claimed credit for persuading Iraq to announce willingness to withdraw.

But reaction to Hussein’s offer from sensitive coalition members has been qualified. A Pakistani official called the Iraqi initiative “a positive development,” for example, but Islamabad--which has 11,000 troops in the Gulf--said it would not pass judgment without further details.

And the most vocal quarters Friday were those countries, from Argentina to Saudi Arabia, advocating continued warfare until Iraq pulls out of Kuwait.

Several analysts said the proposal would be widely recognized as a ploy to save the Iraqi leadership rather than promote attention to the region’s other conflicts.

Officials and analysts were divided about whether the Iraqi leader will back down enough to prevent an escalation of the war.

A State Department official said, “I can’t see him backing down completely and openly. That would be political suicide.”

Others predicted he would eventually back down--but largely in preparation for another day.

“He will pull out of Kuwait, knowing he has no other options,” said political economist Ajami. “He discovered there are limits to his designs and schemes and, having faced an awesome military power that he did not think would be put together, he has decided it would be best to quit, regroup and possibly come back at some more opportune moment.

“Internally, he’ll probably make sure he stays in power, whatever the cost. In the Arab world, he’ll declare that he is a man of all seasons and all reasons because he managed to raise all the right issues and take on the superpowers,” Ajami said.

“In some ways,” Ajami added, “he is winning the battle he fought. He’s just defining the battle differently--for the minds and hearts of the dispossessed in the Arab world has been won in his eyes.”

To some in the Bush Administration, on the other hand, Hussein’s move Friday was the first step toward admitting utter defeat.

“He isn’t going to get a deal, but this prepares the way for him to get out,” one official said. “He’s starting to prepare (Iraqi) public opinion for the loss of Kuwait. . . . It’s a good sign.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.