WASHINGTON- The U.S. government is gearing up for an intensive analysis of the pending Iraqi weapons declaration and plans to make a case to the world to rebut any Iraqi claim that it lacks weapons of mass destruction, officials say.

But the Iraqi declaration may be too bulky and complex to allow for a speedy judgment. And the Bush administration won't be alone in putting its spin on the document. The two U.N. inspection agencies will also review it, after which Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he will brief the Security Council.

Due by Sunday, the Iraqi declaration may be released at least a day earlier and be transmitted to the United Nations weapons inspectors in Baghdad or to the United Nations through the Iraqi mission in New York.

The Iraqi declaration is awaited in Washington as the first significant sign of Saddam Hussein's willingness to abandon his efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and disarm. The White House has put the burden on Iraq to prove that it has disarmed, and officials say Iraqi compliance shouldn't be judged on whether inspectors unearth hidden weapons.

'Will this man disarm?'

"We're not interested in hide-and-seek inside Iraq. The only question is ... will this man disarm?" President Bush said on a political trip to Louisiana yesterday. "The choice is his. And if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition to disarm him."

The latest Security Council resolution on Iraq requires Baghdad to make "a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects" of its programs to develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

By itself, a false declaration would not be a cause for war, according to council diplomats and senior U.S. officials.

"In theory, a false declaration could be a material breach [of the Security Council resolution]. But I think, in fact, it would have to be false declarations combined with attempts at obfuscation or concealment or blocking inspectors, something of that nature," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Fox News on Nov. 13.

But it could be a major step in a downward slide toward conflict, particularly if American officials are able to show that Iraq intentionally withheld information about its weapons programs.

"If Iraqis continue to maintain in their declaration that they do not have weapons of mass destruction, we are certainly prepared to show the international community this is not the case," an administration official said yesterday.

Officials wouldn't say whether the administration would declassify intelligence discoveries to make its case, a step urged by some outside specialists. But they will be judging the Iraqi document based on what they have learned from intelligence sources and Iraqi defectors.

"The U.S. government will put a lot of effort into analyzing it," a senior State Department official said. "A lot of people will be working the moment it arrives."

"We know what they're doing," this official said of the Iraqis. "We don't know what we're going to get."

The United States has at its disposal not only intelligence analysts, but experts in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and other national laboratories. The labs have been put on standby to participate.

Britain, the United States' closest ally on the Security Council, is expected to make its own study of the declaration, with Washington and London sharing information. It is not clear how long the analysis will take.

Iraq could make the work more cumbersome depending on how the declaration is transmitted. It could be in either English or Arabic, requiring numerous translators, and arrive either on CD-ROMs, paper, or some combination of both. It could also be voluminous. Previous Iraqi declarations, with technical addenda, amounted to thousands of pages.

Iraqi officials have privately sought advice from the chief U.N. weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, on what to include, and have been urged to "err on the side of inclusion rather than omission," a U.N. source said. They also insisted to Blix last month that Iraq no longer had any weapons of mass destruction.

A simple, outright denial might be easy for the United States and Britain to rebut. Officials of both countries say they have intelligence showing that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking to develop nuclear arms.

But many expect Iraq's declaration to be too complicated for a quick judgment.

"The general guess is that they will not be totally defiant. Nor are they likely to be totally open," said a Western diplomat on the Security Council.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that Iraq might pick from a range of responses, from total denial to an acknowledgment that some stocks remained and would be surrendered.

Iraq may own up to part of its weapons program, hoping that will satisfy the Security Council, like an animal caught in a trap that "chews off one leg to survive," said Jon Wolfstahl of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For its declaration to have any credibility with the United States and Britain, analysts say, Iraq will have to address discrepancies in its previous report that were cited by the United Nations after its inspectors left Iraq in 1998.

Discrepancies

According to a recent British government report, inspectors were unable to account for: up to 360 tons of bulk chemical warfare agent, including 1.5 tons of VX nerve agent; up to 3,000 tons of chemicals, including about 300 tons that, in the Iraqi chemical warfare program, were unique to the production of VX; growth media sufficient to produce three times the amount of anthrax spores that Iraq acknowledged; and more than 30,000 munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents.

In the years between inspections, the CIA says, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons. Most analysts believe Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, the CIA says.

While the administration says that the threat of war is essential to forcing Hussein to disarm, one analyst suggests the strategy could backfire. David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said that if Hussein believes the United States plans to invade Iraq regardless of what he discloses, he will be more apt to hold on to his weapons of mass destruction.