WASHINGTON - In the face of what they say is Iraq's failure to disclose key information about its weapons programs, American officials are increasing pressure on United Nations weapons inspectors to interview Iraqi scientists, preferably abroad.

But the scheme is fraught with potential problems, not limited to the rage and fright that would be set off in Baghdad if the regime's weapons secrets were about to be revealed.

First is the human dimension.

So notoriously brutal is President Saddam Hussein's security apparatus that Iraqis with damaging information to spill would fear retribution not only against their immediate families but against others in their clans or home villages.

There also are the logistical problems of getting the scientists and their families out of the country. The stealth and speed required to acquire usable information rapidly might involve the inspectors in something akin to an intelligence-style covert operation.

Defectors would likely demand political asylum.

Finally, there is the problem of what to do with a scientist who, once safely abroad, either refuses to talk or has no useful information.

The issue of how, when and where to interview scientists is a key sticking point between the Bush administration and Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Agency.

A senior administration official said this week that the United States was refusing to turn over a list of names of potential interviewees to UNMOVIC until Blix developed "an ambitious program for interviews."

His failure to do so, the official warned, would "speak volumes about the effectiveness about international inspections programs."

U.N. inspectors have the authority to conduct interviews without any Iraqi official present under a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted Nov. 8, which also requires Iraq to facilitate the departure of scientists, with their families, for interviews abroad.

However, Blix has said UNMOVIC would not be a "defection agency" and was not in the abduction business.

The Bush administration views the interviews as a new, important test of Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors as required by the resolution.

One test failed

U.S. officials say Iraq has failed one test, by delivering a 12,000-page weapons declaration Dec. 7 that contains major omissions.

"Our analysis of the Iraqi declaration to this point ... shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions, and all of this is troublesome," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday as American officials in New York briefed members of the Security Council on omissions in the Iraqi document.

Powell and John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, are due to give more extensive commentary today after Blix and Mohamed el Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, give the Security Council their assessment of the Iraqi declaration.

Continued tension

The quiet friction over the scientist interviews highlights the continued tension between advocates of inspections and hawks in the Bush administration who doubt their value and believe a war to oust Hussein's regime is the only way to disarm Iraq.

It has gained new attention among U.S. policymakers after the regime's denial that it has any programs to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and its challenge to the United Nations to prove otherwise.

Iraq released the weapons declaration this month; it mostly recycles previous declarations that U.N. inspectors found inadequate and fails to shed light on what Western governments believe is an active weapons-development program.

For the Bush administration, a move to spirit scientists, nuclear engineers and Iraqi policymakers out of Iraq helps fulfill two goals.

It could provide important information on the content and location of weapons programs that might take inspectors years to uncover, if ever.

It could also be another nail in Hussein's coffin. Attempts by the regime to block interviews or intimidate witnesses would amount to a violation of the Security Council resolution and help build a case for war.

One tool, or the tool

U.N. officials, diplomats and former inspectors agree that interviews with scientists, including defectors, are valuable.

El Baradei has said that, if necessary, he wouldn't hesitate to use the new authority. But the inspection agencies, unlike Washington hawks, view the interviews as one tool among many in the detective work of uncovering Iraq's hidden weapons programs.

Rolf Ekeus, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector, has taken sharp issue with the Bush administration's claims that much of the key information that emerged in the past about Iraqi weaponry came from defectors, not the inspections process.

Where the administration has said that the defection of the Iraqi president's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, in 1995 led to the discovery of a major Iraqi biological weapons program, Ekeus argues that inspectors had previously pieced together important information about the program.

U.N. officials say it might be possible to gain Iraqi scientists' cooperation without spiriting them abroad. U.N. officials in Baghdad have been sweeping offices there to remove any Iraqi listening devices.

In some cases, though, a witness might demand to be taken abroad so as to ensure his or his family's protection.

"You can remove the scientist and his wife and children. But what about the grandmother, cousins, brother and sister?" said Raymond Zilinskas, a former weapons inspector who now runs a nonproliferation program at the Monterrey Institute for International Studies.

"It sounds like a really good power [for the inspectors], but it's fraught with difficulties," Zilinskas said.

Before he agrees to go abroad, a witness needs to be assured of a safe future in another country and probably asylum for himself and his family.

Congress steps in

Such protection might be forthcoming from Congress.

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat, would grant asylum to up to 500 Iraqi scientists to encourage cooperation. The bill quickly passed in the Senate before Congress adjourned, but the House failed to act on it. It is expected to be reintroduced next month.

Asked yesterday whether the Bush administration planned to use the new authority and offer asylum to Iraqi scientists, a White House official demurred, saying only that the administration wants to ensure that the inspectors have "everything they need to do their job in Iraq."

R. James Woolsey, former director of central intelligence and a hawkish adviser to the Pentagon, said any Iraqi known to be talking privately to inspectors is "going to get his tongue cut out or killed."

"What we've got to do is, en masse, whether they agree or not, find some way to get them out," even if it means bringing out 300 at once, Woolsey said.