All the actions of Saddam Hussein over the last few months suggest he is anxious to avoid confrontation. He knows that the US president, George Bush, needs only the slightest excuse to set out on the road to war, and the Iraqi president appears intent on avoiding giving him one.

When the United Nations weapons inspectors hunted for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, President Saddam sought to deliberately obstruct their work. Iraq eight times produced declarations that were supposed to amount to a full account of its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and eight times it was caught lying.

This time the mood in Washington has changed. The Iraqi president knows that if the declaration he provided on Saturday is found to be incomplete or untrue, he will have taken a step closer to a war that will only end with the demise of his government.

That is why he agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors to return after an absence of four years, why he accepted the new UN resolution 1441 on Iraq, and why he handed over the 12,000-odd pages of documentation. Logically, it is in his interests to comply with the UN resolution. He may have got rid of all his weapons of mass destruction - if he ever had them - before the inspectors arrived. Within a few years, the inspectors could conclude they have been unable to find anything, sanctions would be lifted and he could go on to preside over one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East - and even covertly re-arm at a later date.

President Saddam, throughout most of his rule over Iraq, has repeatedly taken the wrong option, resulting in two costly wars and the imposition of sanctions. But over the last few years there are signs he may have learned his lesson. He and his advisers have shown themselves to be more astute at diplomacy, from securing international sympathy for the plight of the sanctions-hit Iraqi population to support in the Arab world for his backing for the Palestinians.

At other times his actions suggest a lack of understanding of international opinion, such as his decision to invite the world´s press to Iraq to witness a mock referendum on his presidency: his 99.9% vote was universally ridiculed.

His semi-apology to Kuwait on Saturday that coincided with the handing over of the declaration falls between clever and cack-handed. Instead of a full apology and a list of what happened to some 600 missing Kuwaitis, his statement amounted to incitement of the Kuwaiti population. The semi-apology was rejected by Kuwait and would not have won him support among other Gulf rulers.

The Iraqi strategy on its arms declara tion is to cast doubt on US and British claims that it has any hidden biological, chemical or nuclear-related weapons in the hope that world opinion - and especially other members of the UN security council - will be sufficiently uncertain of the truth to prevent a military attack. If the US insists on attacking anyway, the aim will be to make its behaviour look as unreasonable as possible.

There are signs that Iraq will pursue various other public relations gambits. There have already been official hints that it will announce its own form of "regime change" with a new constitution and "political pluralism and freedom", though there is little doubt that any changes will be purely cosmetic.

Iraq´s difficulty in drafting its declaration to the security council - since it had decided to plead not guilty to possessing weapons of mass destruction - was to avoid making statements that could easily be proved false, while at the same time giving a full and detailed account of its activities as required by resolution 1441.

It may have included vast amounts of irrelevant material in order to slow down the inspectors´ analysis. But this is also a consequence of the sweeping demands made by the resolution.

Iraq has so far insisted that it destroyed them unilaterally in the 1990s, a claim that the UN inspectors of that period refused to believe. One new tactic might be to blame Britain and the US for the disappearance of some items, which it is claimed were destroyed by missile attacks during Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Iraq has also indicated that it will attempt to spread blame for the pre-1998 weaponry beyond its own borders, threatening to name companies and countries that helped it develop weapons of mass destruction in the past.

Iraq can also be expected to argue that everything associated with weapons of mass destruction by western intelligence agencies is either for civilian use or for permitted military use. This could make it difficult to prove to the satisfaction of security council members such as Russia, France and China that Iraq has been cheating.

President George Bush said last week that the onus was on Iraq to prove that it has no weapons of mass destruction, but the course set by UN resolution 1441 puts the onus on the inspectors to disprove Iraq´s declaration, a process that could take months.

Baghdad´s calculation is that France, Russia, China and others will insist on turning the inspectors into detectives, delaying any prospect of military action until the hot weather arrives. That would force the US to choose between maintaining the UN consensus and striking out on its own, with all the political risks that would entail.

The timetable

Saturday A day ahead of schedule, Iraq hands over 12,000 pages of documentation in response to UN demands for a full declaration of all weapons of mass destruction and their components. It also offers an apology of sorts to Kuwait.

Yesterday Inspectors fly the documentation from Baghdad to Cyprus, where the pages are split into two batches. Part is flown to Frankfurt and then to New York, HQ of Unmovic. The rest goes to Vienna, HQ of the international atomic energy agency.

Thirty-five more inspectors arrive as colleagues conduct a search at a geological research facility centre at Fallujah, near Baghdad.

Today The inspectors will open the documents and begin sifting through them to see what is new.

Tomorrow Hans Blix is due to meet the UN security council to tell it how much of the documentation is new. This meeting could slip to later in the week. More inspectors are to arrive, bringing the total in Iraq to 70.

Next week Blix is hoping to be able to return to the security council to provide an initial assessment of the documentation.

January 26 Sixty days from the start of their work, inspectors have to report to the security council on their progress and offer a plan for continuing inspections. If the conclusion was that Iraq was guilty of a material breach of the UN resolution, the security council would meet to discuss war. (Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 12/09/02)