NITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 — Secretary General Kofi Annan smiled broadly when he stepped to the microphones on Monday afternoon to report the breakthrough: Iraq would allow United Nations weapons inspectors to return "without conditions." But his news made United States officials furious.

A few blocks away in his suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell interrupted a meeting with the foreign minister of Egypt to read the Iraqi offer, which was drafted with Mr. Annan's advice and brokered with his blessing to avert war. In an instant, Iraq's move put the brakes on the diplomatic charge that President Bush had started with a powerful speech just four days earlier, calling on the United Nations to hold President Saddam Hussein accountable for defying its resolutions.

Because it came from a president whose tendency has been to go it alone in world affairs, Mr. Bush's warning — that the United Nations must prove its authority to Iraq or watch Washington oust Mr. Hussein — stirred up the world organization in a way not seen for years.

An administration reluctant to have the United States' power tied down by smaller players had suddenly sprung into action on every front, phone-calling, handshaking and horse-trading from Washington to New York to Moscow to Beijing.

But Iraq's offer, engineered under pressure from Arab states wary of war, brought a swift return to business as usual in the glass and steel tower here on the East River. By week's end, the White House was venting its irritation with Mr. Annan for failing to get a guarantee of unfettered access for the inspectors.

Washington was fencing with France, which holds a veto over any Security Council resolution to confront Iraq. Despite a half-hour phone call on Friday morning, Mr. Bush himself could not persuade his friend President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, another permanent member of the Security Council, to join him in supporting a tough resolution to threaten military force against Mr. Hussein.

The Bush administration was just where it hoped not to be. Instead of fostering a diplomatic unity that masked the underlying disparity between a United States geared for war and a majority of nations fearful of or opposed to military action, American officials warned of a "difficult debate" in the Security Council. At home, the White House found itself working hard to persuade doubting Democrats in Congress to provide an open-ended authorization for a military attack.

Although many nations worried that Washington would plunge into another Persian Gulf war, this time to defend its own interests, the administration pressed its demands for a new Council resolution.

It wanted the United Nations to set a deadline for admitting weapons inspectors and to threaten "consequences" if Iraq did not comply.

American officials were betting that Baghdad would balk — as it did today in a statement from the leadership read on Iraqi state radio — if the Council changed the ground rules for the inspections.

Opening Moves
Planning the Approach as Concern Builds

In the doldrums of July, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, started talking more and more about taking on Mr. Hussein. They resumed planning for a showdown they had initiated early in the administration but postponed after the Sept. 11 attacks last year.

They examined military options, senior administration officials said, and tried to find ways to make their proposal for a leadership change in Iraq more like a liberation than an oil-grabbing American occupation.

From the beginning, President Bush "was pretty clear he wanted to seek international support," one official said. But he did not want to get roped into a multilateral tangle that it could not shake loose if the rest of the world refused to go along.

During his August sojourn at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., Mr. Bush began to lead discussions on Iraq, the officials said. The president saw the General Assembly, where he was scheduled to speak on Sept. 12, as the forum where he should rally the world to his view that Mr. Hussein was an outlaw developing weapons of mass destruction who might someday hand one to a terrorist.

A rare moment of agreement between Mr. Powell and Mr. Cheney on Iraq policy produced the idea that the president should challenge the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities. Both men concurred, a senior administration official said, that "the United Nations was behaving in a way that diminished its credibility" by allowing Mr. Hussein to go on for years barring weapons inspectors and ignoring Security Council resolutions requiring him to disarm, settle with Kuwait and respect human rights.

"We knew we had to find a way for the United Nations to play a role, but it couldn't be the kind of resolution it passed before," the official said.

But Mr. Cheney conveyed a different message when he opened the administration's campaign against Iraq in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville on Aug. 26. He spoke so disparagingly of past United Nations weapons inspections that he left the impression the administration would not go anywhere near that route, or the United Nations, ever again.

After his speech raised international alarm that the administration was becoming a loose cannon, Mr. Cheney promised his colleagues that he would clarify his remarks. In a second speech three days later, he did.

Secretary General Annan was also thinking in August of the General Assembly, but his concern centered on "the general unilateralist noise coming out of Washington," a United Nations official said. He began to craft the speech he would give, by long tradition, on the first day of the assembly debate, just before the president's.

Mr. Annan knew from painful past experience that the United Nations could not really function without the support of the world's only superpower.

"No purpose is served by him coming to be identified by the United States as an adversary," the official said. "You can't afford to do that. You just break the machine."

The secretary general went through draft after draft of his speech, looking for "delicate" language to convince his global audience — without naming the United States — that multilateral action through the United Nations was the most effective way to defend international security.

Mr. Annan realized that his message would be on key after all when he received a call from President Bush on Sept. 9. The president told Mr. Annan that he would make the confrontation with Iraq "a multilateral decision," American and United Nations officials said. But Mr. Bush also let him know that his patience was not eternal.

"If the United Nations was unable to act," the president said, according to an administration official, "the United States would look at alternative means of ensuring there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

By the time his speech was set in print, Mr. Annan felt it would be one of his most important as secretary general. He sent President Bush a copy on Sept. 11 and, in a rare departure from the United Nations' tiptoe protocol, he authorized his staff to release the text that night, so his words would appear in the global news media well ahead of President Bush's.

Mr. Annan was careful to include a phrase that United States officials loved when they heard it. "If Iraq's defiance continues, " the secretary general said, "the Security Council must face its responsibilities."

Days of Change
A Twisting Path After the Triumph

"We knew it was a home run right away," said one United States official of President Bush's Sept. 12 speech. "I almost want to use the word `glee' to describe the reaction. The diplomats were saying that we saved the United Nations."

The president's address struck like a bolt of electric energy in the assembly hall. There was also palpable relief that the United States would try to strengthen the United Nations instead of sidelining it. As the president spoke, Secretary Powell sat in the United States delegate's seat in the assembly chamber, savoring a victory for his long insistence on international consultation.

It was a day of unusual harmony between the administration and the United Nations, with Mr. Bush announcing that the United States would rejoin Unesco, the cultural and scientific organization from which the Reagan administration withdrew nearly two decades ago, saying its values were anti-American. At a lunch after his speech, Mr. Bush toasted Mr. Annan and spoke of "continued cooperation between the United States and the United Nations."

Suddenly Mr. Hussein was on the wrong side of an enormous swell of pressure. The prospect of war seemed much closer.

On Sept. 13, Secretary Powell pressed his advantage. He held more than a dozen meetings into the night with foreign ministers from major nations, including all 15 members of the Security Council, plus separate sessions with each of the foreign ministers of Japan, Canada and Qatar, the last a Persian Gulf state whose cooperation would be vital to any military campaign against Iraq.

At the same time, Arab diplomats also mobilized, led by Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher of Egypt, by Amr Moussa, the Egyptian secretary general of the Arab League, and by foreign ministers from Lebanon and Jordan. In a series of meetings with Mr. Annan, Arab leaders argued that an American attack on Iraq could enrage the public and destabilize their entire region.

It was the secretary general — whom Secretary Powell referred to in easier times as "my man Kofi" — who shifted the tide. While all the media attention had gone to President Bush's address, Mr. Annan's speech had been even more popular. Buoyed, Mr. Annan decided to drop in on a closed-door caucus of the Arab League on Sept. 14.

For years, the Security Council's focus with Iraq had been on inspections to ensure that Mr. Hussein was not building biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. The United Nations inspectors had pulled out in December 1998, just before bombing raids by the United States and Britain, and Mr. Hussein refused to allow them back.

Now Mr. Annan saw that there was broad support among the nations gathered in New York for the return of the inspectors to Iraq, as a means of testing Mr. Hussein one last time and putting off a war that no one except the Bush administration and its close ally, Britain, felt quite ready for.

One senior Arab diplomat recalled that after Mr. Annan departed the meeting, leaving the Arab leaders alone, they all piled on Foreign Minister Naji Sabri of Iraq about the inspectors.

"Our main point was, `If you don't allow the inspectors in, you are getting a strike,"' the diplomat said. "And Iraq is coming back and saying whether they allow them in or not is immaterial, and we say: `No, if you let them back in, you'll create a dynamic."'

By late Saturday afternoon, the diplomat said, there was an outpouring of appeals on the inspectors to Mr. Hussein from other Arabs, including the Lebanese foreign minister, Mahmud Hammud, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Mr. Annan tried not to get ahead of Washington. On Sunday, Sept. 15, he called Secretary Powell to bring him up to date on his efforts. He called the secretary again on Monday, United Nations and United States officials said.

Sooner than anyone expected, Iraqi officials had decided to relent on the inspectors. They went to Mr. Annan for advice on drafting the letter to him in which they would make their offer. The secretary general worked to dissuade the Iraqis from using the letter to reassert a host of conditions on the weapons inspections.

But he could not persuade Iraqi officials to guarantee the inspectors "unfettered access" in Iraq, a term of art meaning they could look into any site they chose in their hunt for prohibited weapons.

The French then threw Washington a curveball on Monday. Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin argued passionately, at a lunch with reporters, that the Security Council should not immediately threaten military action against Iraq, as the United States proposed, but focus closely on the return of the inspectors. He suggested that the Bush administration was underestimating the difficulties of a military operation in Iraq.

"We feel that Europe needs the United States, but the United States also needs Europe," Mr. De Villepin said. "You just cannot go out and do things alone."

By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Annan was ready to announce the deal crafted with Iraq.

He made his statement under the bright lights at the main entrance to the United Nations building, crediting Mr. Bush's speech and Arab pressure for Baghdad's change of heart.

Marwan Muasher, foreign minister of Jordan, Iraq's neighbor, soon hailed the Iraqi move. "The letter is clear and I think we should take it at face value and work with it," Mr. Muasher said. "We have taken a step back at least from a course that would lead us to war."

But United States officials were upset. Mr. Annan, they felt, had defeated them at their own game: spin control.

"Clearly the hope of the secretary general was to get out in front of the story before anyone else could," one administration official fumed.

On Tuesday morning, Ambassador John D. Negroponte told Mr. Annan of the American displeasure, and other American diplomats berated Fred Eckhard, the secretary general's spokesman. With intense negotiations on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also under way, Mr. Annan called Mr. Powell and also Ms. Rice on Tuesday to try to mitigate the Iraq damage.

Into Discord
A Clash Among Allies, and Words From Iraq

For Secretary Powell, working on Tuesday from his Waldorf Astoria suite, the news did not at first seem all bad. He began his day with a private session with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal. According to a senior administration official, the prince expressed skepticism about the Iraqi offer and said his kingdom would insist on "unfettered access" for weapons inspectors. Secretary Powell took that as a good sign.

But the secretary found himself in a multilateral ambush at a late morning news conference at the United Nations, which was supposed to be about the discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, on the same platform with Secretary Powell, flatly contradicted the secretary's view that the Security Council still needed a new resolution to force Iraq to meet its disarmament requirements — at least for the moment.

Mr. Ivanov's disagreement was sharp enough that Secretary Powell felt forced to respond to him equally forcefully, insisting it would be "appropriate" for the Security Council to spell out in a new resolution "what the consequences for inaction" would be for Iraq.

"What has changed in the last few days is not the letter that came in yesterday," Secretary Powell said. "It's the full will of the international community being directed at this problem."

American officials later tried to find a silver lining in Mr. Ivanov's remarks, noting that he had not ruled out a resolution at some point, nor directly threatened a Russian veto.

Apparently, diplomats from other nations said, Moscow was still deciding what price it wanted Washington to pay for at least tacit Kremlin support of action on Iraq. Mr. Putin had notably taken advantage a day before Mr. Bush's speech, using the Sept. 11 anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America to demand Russian military action in Georgia to roust Chechen rebels there.

But the clash between the two Security Council veto powers was so visible that Mr. Annan felt compelled to mediate, closing the session with a call for unity.

Unexpectedly, American officials were playing a defensive game. At the United Nations, they began to look for any sign that Iraq did not intend to cooperate fully with the weapons inspectors and to browbeat United Nations officials for being insufficiently vigilant.

Secretary Powell was on the telephone constantly. Top administration officials fanned out to capitals across the globe, and important foreign officials — prominent among them Mr. Ivanov — visited Washington.

In Moscow, American officials argued that Russia's economic interests would be better served by an Iraq that was not an international pariah constrained by severe sanctions. Similar economic arguments were pitched to France, which has oil contracts and other lucrative interests in Iraq.

With one accustomed ally, Germany, there was little discussion at all. A damaging rift that had developed with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder over Iraq exploded by week's end into open frostiness after the German justice minister, a member of Mr. Schröder's party, reportedly compared Mr. Bush's tactics on Iraq to those of Hitler.

The split made it seem likely, German officials said, that the United States would withdraw any support for Germany's bid for a permanent, veto-bearing seat on the Security Council.

Fortunately for Washington, the diplomatic flow turned again on Thursday, largely thanks to Mr. Hussein himself.

In an unvarnished letter he sent to the General Assembly, Mr. Hussein declared that his nation was free of weapons of mass destruction but offered no guarantee of cooperation with the United Nations weapons teams and seemed to impose new conditions on them, saying they would have to respect Iraq's "sovereignty."

Responding to President Bush in radical language long abandoned by most other Arab leaders, President Hussein accused the United States and Israel — "the Zionist entity" — of seeking to seize Iraq's oil and dominate the world. Mr. Hussein's message helped President Bush as he sent Congress his request for authorization to use military force against Iraq, arguing that it would strengthen his hand in the negotiations in the Security Council.

Sensing the battle royal to come in the Council, Mr. Annan decided to lie low. Mr. Eckhard said he had rejected dozens of interview requests this week.

But on Friday, Mr. Annan appeared in public leading the annual ringing of the United Nations peace bell, donated by Japan. In a new twist, the secretary general called for the whole world to honor a cease-fire in all conflicts for one day on Sept. 21.

With all the talk of war in Iraq, hardly anyone noticed Mr. Annan's appeal.