Adel Darwish reports on the latest news from Baghdad.

During the Iraqi crisis last February, one American commentator wondered why the United States had manoeuvred itself into a situation where it would look bad if it did nothing but if it did something, it would look worse. Six weeks ago, America and its only ally, Britain, re-discovered an old proverb: It is easier to start a fight with Iraq than to end one.

Only days after Operation Desert Fox was called off on 19 December, Iraqis began taking pot-shots at American aircraft, triggering a row over the no-fly zones that cover half their country. International lawyers, analysts and critics of US policy on Iraq, who had forgotten about the no-fly zones for years, began to question their legality.

Unlike weapons inspections, the fate of Kuwaiti prisoners, compensation or demarcation of borders with Kuwait, the no-fly zones were imposed by the allies, not by UN Security Council Resolutions.

And the political fallout continues. Russia's President Boris Yeltsin called the strikes "illegal and senseless" and briefly recalled his ambassadors from America and Britain. France protested by pulling its aircraft out of the force that has been patrolling the no-fly zone over southern Iraq (it had earlier withdrawn from the northern patrol).

So, has the latest episode, involving hundreds of aircraft and over 325 missiles (these alone cost the Americans $400 million) brought a conclusion any closer?

President Saddam Hussein seems to have taken control of the confrontation, forcing the Americans and British to react to situations he creates.

He is calling the tune, at little cost to himself. There has been no credible evidence produced by the Pentagon that any of the expensive air to ground missiles or air to air missiles (roughly worth about $380,000 to $420,000 each) have hit any targets. The only Iraqi interceptor, a MIG-23, that came down, did so because it ran out of fuel. In one five-minute-long confrontation on 5 January, the cost to American taxpayers was estimated at $3.5 million.

President Hussein has also forced America into a propaganda war, one, as far as most Arab states are concerned, he shows every sign of winning.

Thousands of US flags, distributed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to welcome President Clinton during his visit to Gaza two days before Desert Fox, are now routinely burnt as part of a daily protest.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced angry demonstrators during his visit to South Africa in running battles not seen since apartheid days, and President Mandela himself opposed the policy on Iraq.

On 7 January, President Hussein called upon Arabs and Muslims in countries siding with the US to overthrow their governments. Three days later, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa condemned the Iraqi leader suggesting his people should topple him. Almost at the same time, the official Saudi Arabian news agency distributed an unprecedented dispatch calling upon Iraqi people to topple the tyrant of Baghdad, and accusing him of murdering his own people.

The Iraqi leader hopes to drag the region into the kind of antagonism not seen since Colonel Nasser's battles over the 'Voice of the Arabs Radio', which polarised the region into a conservative monarchies-led camp, pitted against radicals led by Nasser; the period was littered with assassinations, military coups, civil wars and confrontations with the West.

Some experts believe the Iraqis are trying to lure American aircraft into a trap over the no-fly zones so they can bring down an American aircraft. According to a Baghdad-based Wesetrm envoy, it would be a big propaganda coup for them. They would please the Russians and show the effectiveness of their air defence equipment.

But more importantly for Saddam would be the coup of putting on display a captured American pilot telling the world how ashamed he was for bombing Iraqi women and children.

The Desert Fox bombing, however, achieved one thing: it effectively put an end to the work of UNSCOM, the United Nations body charged with disposing of Iraq's deadliest weapons. Iraq announced that the arms inspectors, who had fled the country hours before the bombing began, would not be allowed back. Stories leaked from UN sources that Secretary General Kofi Annan was infuriated by evidence that America, and possibly other powers, had used UNSCOM as a cover to spy on Iraq, were confirmed by US officials, giving further credibility to Iraqi claims that some UNSCOM inspectors were American spies.

With UN inspectors out of Iraq, analysts say Iraq's pursuit of a nuclear bomb has not been slowed by the attack. "The Iraqis are closer now to building a nuclear weapon than they were in January 1991, [when the Gulf war began]," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Mr Albright, who served as a nuclear-weapons inspector in Iraq, is now working with Khidir Hamza, a scientist who defected from Iraq's nuclear-weapons programme. They believe Iraq could build a nuclear bomb within two or three years - or two or three months if Iraqi agents can obtain supplies of highly enriched uranium from Russia.

"With less fear now of getting caught, President Hussein has more incentive to pursue the building of a bomb," Mr Albright added. "He knows Russian machine tools, technology and people can be obtained. Without inspectors, I don't see how we can have sufficient prior warning to stop Iraq from building a bomb. It might take a year or two to detect a nuclear programme. The clock is ticking."

American officials assure the world that their bombs made a huge dent in President Hussein's weapons programmes. Assessing the damage caused by Desert Fox, General Henry Shelton, America's top military man, said that "nine Iraqi missile factories had been put out of operation for at least a year."

However, other military experts are not impressed. "Many of the buildings hit seem to have marginal value," said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The Iraqis had plenty of time to hide valuable military assets. He believes the initial assertions of significant damage inflicted on Iraq appeared to be an awkward combination of propaganda and complete rubbish.

"The bombardment did nothing to stop Iraq's drive to build biological and chemical weapons," maintained Scott Ritter, the weapons inspector who resigned to protest at what he called weak US support for the mission. Other experts predict that President Hussein will rebuild his biological and chemical arsenal by June or July of this year. So America faces the prospect of bombing Iraq every few months, never dealing a knockout blow and never knowing when the Iraqi leader will use or threaten to use the prohibited weapons that he is said to be secretly developing.

The situation prompted senator Sam Brownback, (Republican-Kansas), to claim that there still is no coherent US plan to deal with the Iraqi regime. "I was hoping we were in the process of developing a foreign policy toward Iraq," he said. After they called off their bombers, America and Britain drafted a new five-point strategy to keep Saddam in the cage, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it. It includes the continuous presence of force and the threat to use it, offering help to the Iraqi opposition, trying to resume inspections, taking tougher measures against smugglers undermining sanctions and launching a diplomatic offensive to get more allies on board. All amount to almost nothing.

Saddam Hussein has weathered many bombings and believes he could survive a few more. The Iraqi opposition is a joke, and the $97 million earmarked for it by America an even bigger joke. Senator Brownback, who strongly supports the liberation act, concedes that the present leaders of the Iraqi opposition are flawed. "Every one of them has warts," he said. The only pressure available to Washington to have UNSCOM re-admitted to Iraq is through sanctions, eight years of which did little to weaken President Hussein's grip on power. Smugglers get round the sanctions, they do so chiefly through Turkey, which winks at the infractions, or through Iran and Syria, where America has little influence.

With the departure of UNSCOM - teasing the inspectors have been the favourite means of the Iraqi leader to attract attention - new methods of challenging America's stranglehold are already being tested. In addition to air challenges, Saddam's renewed threat to end the UN's humanitarian aid programme, could also bring about a new crisis, as could threats, lately rekindled, laying claim to Kuwait, which started the whole crisis in 1990. Saddam's military infrastructure may or may not have been damaged, but his command and control mechanism remain effective, according to an envoy from a NATO country. President Clinton had to attack because if he didn't, American credibility would have been destroyed. But ultimately, he added, nothing has changed, and no one seems to know where we go from here.