At the time, 50 Iraqi guards were reported to have died from a "rapidly progressing disease" that spread to Baghdad after a strike on a biological weapons facility near the city. A new offensive against Iraq could therefore concentrate on biological, and possibly chemical, warfare targets much more specifically than was possible, or thought necessary, in the Gulf War - but only as long as those facilities were away from populated areas.The official US history of the war freely admits that the failure to disable Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical potential was primarily due to inadequate intelligence. "This is turning into a political, not a military option," a senior military official in Washington was quoted as complaining. The dispute centres on the type of target to be attacked, but is really about US policy objectives in Iraq. Once again, as so often in the 20th century, the US Air Force is promising results that politicians suspect are exaggerated and will involve heavy civilian casualties. The Pentagon is frustrated to see its plans for a wider war vetoed by the White House national-security staff under Bob Bell, who are cautiously picking the targets, say US sources. The Pentagon is clear what it would like to go after: almost everything.

DEEP divisions are opening between the White House and the Pentagon on the type of air offensive to be waged against Baghdad. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are making clear that they want it directed primarily at Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and the means to deliver them. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff want something far more devastating and wide- ranging. Mikhail Gorbachev later wrote in his memoirs that "Washington preferred the argument that a political settlement would be a mistake for the United States, since this would have raised the Soviet Union's prestige, something that many of the President's advisers always perceived as not in America's interests."It is a reflection of the cooler relations that now exist between Moscow and Washington - and also, perhaps, of the price of Nato expansion - that Boris Yeltsin's Russia appears more stridently opposed to bombing the Iraqi dictator into line today than Mikhail Gorbachev's broadly supportive, crumbling empire..

Russia's current Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, an Arabic-speaking KGB veteran and long-term acquaintance of Saddam, took an active role in the last-minute diplomacy which tried to avert violence. As Mikhail Gorbachev was to admit, the invasion put the Soviet Union in an awkward position, not least because of its multi-million dollar interests there. Ultimately, though, the Soviets supported the use of force - marking the first instance of US-Soviet co-operation in the Middle East.Moscow was never much at ease with the war, which was seen domestically as a betrayal of an ally, and pressed hard for an early conclusion. Officially, the USSR took a neutral position, maintaining ties with Iraq while trying not to alienate the newly-arrived, usefully anti-Western, ayatollahs in Tehran.By the time Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, there were thousands of Soviet citizens in Iraq working as military advisers and technical specialists. This, and the prospect of benefiting from lucrative oil contracts, is why the Kremlin has been keen to see UN sanctions lifted.The Soviet-era relationship was complex and sometimes tense, particularly following the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, a conflict which Leonid Brezhnev described as "absolutely senseless". Like peacekeepers in Bosnia, the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq have been operating with a degree of consent from the Iraqis, who have shown considerable courtesy and correctness Bomb them and that consent will be blown away, too. Before authorising a military strike, we need to be sure that everything else has failed - for when the first bomb falls, we will really be back at war.t Christopher Bellamy is Reader in Military and Security Studies and Deputy Director of the Security Studies Institute at Cranfield University He reported on the Gulf War for 'The Independent'..