U.S. Sanctions Threat Takes U.N. by Surprise : Diplomacy: Official’s insistence on Hussein’s removal may set a collision course with the Security Council.

WASHINGTON —  After straining for months to keep broad international support for its confrontation with Iraq, the Bush Administration may have set itself on a nettlesome course of conflict at the United Nations with its surprise threat to maintain sanctions on Iraq so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.

The threat, delivered by Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates at a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. in Vancouver, Canada, on Tuesday, obviously surprised the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. It clearly strayed far beyond the intent of the cease-fire resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council in early April.

If carried out, the threat could provoke resentment and anger against the United States at the United Nations.

The problem was acknowledged to some extent by one U.S. official who looked on the policy as a major change of course. “The United States has been punctilious about staying within the resolution up to now,” he said. “In general, it (the Gates threat) goes beyond the resolution.”

President Bush has often said that he wants Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq. But this marked the first time that a senior Administration official has stated that any easing of sanctions depends on Hussein’s ouster.

Gates, who is looked on as a leading candidate to replace the retiring William H. Webster as director of the CIA, said in his speech: “Saddam is discredited and cannot be redeemed. His leadership will never be accepted by the world community and, therefore, Iraqis will pay the price while he remains in power.

“All possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone,” Gates went on. “Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government.”

The Security Council resolution, which officially ended the Persian Gulf War on April 3, does not require Iraq to change its leadership to qualify for the lifting of sanctions. Instead, the resolution states that sanctions will end whenever the Security Council agrees that Iraq has complied with the demands that it destroy all its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and that it pay reparations for all the damages it caused during its occupation of Kuwait.

The five permanent members of the Security Council met Wednesday to discuss the level of Iraq’s compensation for war damages, but a U.N. spokesman said it will take weeks before a decision is made.

The resolution permits the easing of the sanctions while the process of compliance is going on.

In his speech to the Security Council after the resolution was passed, U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering did not even mention the name of Saddam Hussein. “Upon implementation of the provisions dealing with mass destruction and the compensation regime,” Pickering said, “the sanctions against Iraqi exports will be lifted.”

Although most U.S. officials insisted that Gates’ speech did not represent a change of policy, it clearly marked a major shift in public statements about the policy.

White House sources said the new course was ironed out after weekend consultations with representatives of various agencies concerned with international and security affairs. The policy itself and the Gates speech were approved by President Bush on Monday after he left Bethesda Naval Hospital and returned to work, the sources said.

The sudden public change in the American position, apparently based on the hope that the threat might contribute toward the ousting of Hussein, came on the eve of an official visit of U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to Washington. The secretary general will confer with Bush in the Oval Office of the White House today and then lunch with the President.

In practice, the change of policy, if carried to its logical end, could put the United States in the position of vetoing the removal of sanctions after nearly every other country has agreed that Iraq has complied with the provisions of the cease-fire resolution.

Briefing reporters at the White House about the impending Perez de Cuellar visit, a senior Administration official insisted that the Gates speech does not conflict with the U.N. resolution.

“The cease-fire resolution, Resolution 687, expressly contemplates that the Security Council will look at the existing sanctions every 60 days,” the official said, “and that was a signal to the government of Iraq that if Saddam Hussein was removed and there were other changes, that we would look with greater favor on the removal of--or easing of--sanctions than if he stayed in power. So I mean, we wrote into Resolution 687 exactly what Bob Gates was saying yesterday.”

Sources at the United Nations said that they doubt that the United States can maintain this policy if Iraq complies with all the requirements of the resolutions.

The United States would be risking all the goodwill it has gathered during the months of crisis as American officials worked strenuously to align the United States and the United Nations on all matters of major policy.

But the senior Administration official said there is enough support for the U.S. position to prevent the Security Council from lifting sanctions while Hussein still rules Iraq.

“After all,” he said, “any change in the status of the sanctions would require a further Security Council resolution, which I believe we would veto and I think others might veto as well.”

Times staff writers Norman Kempster and David Lauter contributed to this report.