WASHINGTON: After struggling for months to talk other nations into helping oust Saddam Hussein, President Bush is beginning to use terms they might find easier to understand: cash, weapons, business deals and favours.

Bush’s speech on Thursday at the United Nations marked the start of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations to see what inducements will help convert countries that so far have been balking, at least publicly, at joining the anti-Saddam campaign.

US officials expect the Turks to ask for weapons and debt relief, the Russians and French for access to Iraqi oilfield business, the Qataris for cash to build an air base, and the Jordanians for guarantees of oil and trade. Officials expect many other countries to join the horse trading, and predict they won’t be shy.

“Countries in the Middle East take the bazaar approach,” said Danielle Pletka, a former Senate aide who now works at the American Enterprise Institute. “Once they know we want to buy ... the sky’s the limit.”

Said a senior congressional aide, “This is a great time to step forward and get something you want from the United States.”

The administration’s initial focus will be on members of the UN Security Council, notably Russia, France, and China, officials say. Their backing will be important soon, as the United States tries to convince the council to enforce resolutions demanding that Iraq abandon chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes.

But US officials will also try to persuade many other countries in the Middle East and farther afield to cooperate with a military campaign, or at least to temper their opposition. The Pentagon still needs to win commitments from countries near Iraq for military bases and overflight rights.

The effort mirrors US coalition-building before the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and before the US assault last fall on the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Yet this job promises to be considerably tougher, since many nations are skeptical of the need for war, and the United States doesn’t have access to the billions of dollars that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others contributed to the 1991 campaign.

“The horse trading will be much more difficult this time,” predicted Edward S. Walker Jr., a former assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, who is now president of the Middle East Institute. “The price tag in some of the places which have nominally gone on record opposing an invasion might be quite steep.

“Part of what you’ve been seeing is people making a public display of opposition that will increase the price,” he said.

Most countries resent any suggestion that their support can be bought. These countries insist that such deals are needed simply to reduce the economic costs and political risks of cooperation.

Turkish officials, were furious last winter when former Clinton political guru Dick Morris declared on American TV that the United States had bought Turkey’s military cooperation over time by pressing for a rich International Monetary Fund loan programme.

“They were outraged,” said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkish expert and former diplomat at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s precisely the wrong image.”

Turkey’s strategic location and frequent cooperation have made it America’s most important military partner in the region. The Turks contend their participation this time would add a huge burden at a time when the country is trying to cope with crushing economic problems. They are also deeply worried that war with Iraq might lead to an independent Kurdish state that would threaten their own eastern territory.

Accordingly, they have a long wish list, including advanced weapons, relief on their $5-billion debt to the United States for weapons purchases, and help from the United States in ensuring that the country continues to receive IMF credits, US officials say.

Some Turkish officials have also pressed the United States to see to it that any military campaign doesn’t take place in the summer, when it could damage the country’s tourist industry.

Turkish officials argue that their country has lost more than $40 billion in revenue by cooperating with the United States during the Persian Gulf War and the continuing isolation of Iraq since then.

Russia has made little secret of the importance that economics will have in winning its cooperation. Russians have told US officials they want any new Baghdad government to honour Iraq’s $8-billion debt to Russia. They want assurances that any successor government will allow Russian companies to keep their large share of the Iraqi oil business, and to get a piece of the business that develops in the new Iraq.

While State Department officials insist the US government has made no commitments, Alexander Vershbow, the US ambassador to Russia, told reporters that Moscow’s investments in Iraq would be “better protected under new leadership.”

Russia has yet to receive “a single kopek” of the $8 billion debt, he noted.

Another demand may be Washington’s silence on Russia’s planned $1 billion nuclear power plant for Iran.

Russia’s arrangement with the United States could involve an important non-financial issue: Washington might have signalled that it will give the Kremlin a free hand against Chechen separatists, including those taking refuge in sovereign, US- allied Georgia.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to be preparing Russians for a reversal of the Kremlin’s rejection of military action against Iraq when he proclaimed that Russia had the right to attack Chechen bases in Georgia to do its part in the ‘war against terrorism’.

In France, a government official denied that the government would seek any financial deal as part of an agreement to join the United States.

“Our focus on Iraq is about disarmament, not about access to oilfields if there’s a new government,” the official said. Yet a US official noted that the French complained often that after the Gulf War, French companies did not join in the rebuilding of the Kuwait oilfields, as they had been promised.

It is not clear whether China will ask the United States to protect its small but growing business stake in Iraq, or provide other help. China is not expected to directly support a US campaign; the question is how vocal and obstructive it might be.

In exchange for not loudly opposing US action in Iraq, Beijing will probably press for satisfaction on its biggest diplomatic concern: Taiwan.

China has been displeased with what it sees as a tilt toward Taiwan by the Bush administration.—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service.