Decision on Possible Attack on Iraqi Town Seems Near

David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, New York Times

Washington, April 24 — Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.

In a wave of heavy violence across Iraq, at least 14 Iraqis were killed Saturday in an attack on a crowded market in Baghdad, and 14 more Iraqis were killed by a bomb as they traveled in a bus south of the capital.

Seven American soldiers were killed Saturday in two attacks. Later, in Basra, two American soldiers died when suicide bombers attempted water-borne raids on the nation's main oil terminal.

As Mr. Bush discusses strategy for Falluja, administration and senior military officials portray his choices as dismal.

"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible." Intense fighting stands the chance of intensifying resistance to the coalition, both in Sunni and Shiite centers.

No decision to begin military action has been made yet.

The chief of the American occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, visited Falluja on Saturday with Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, to consult with frontline commanders.

They appeared to be making a last-ditch effort for a negotiated settlement.

But in Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed strong doubts that the Falluja political and business figures the Americans are talking to hold any sway over the insurgents.

On Saturday, as a blinding sandstorm swept across a sprawling former Iraqi Army base near Falluja, Marine commanders were getting assignments for potential targets, studying maps and planning lines of attack for a battle that they expect could come in the next few days. The Marines have encircled the city, awaiting Mr. Bush's decision.

But the city, a sandy mix of wide boulevards and back alleys along the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, poses what military officials say is an immensely complicated and dangerous urban combat terrain.

While administration officials say they would like to carry out a precise attack on an estimated 2,000 hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, military officials say there is no way guided missiles or pinpoint bombing can do this job.

Instead, the military is planning swift raids by Marine riflemen ‹ backed by helicopters and gunships ‹ aimed at the insurgents' leaders and their gunmen, while encouraging others in the city to evacuate or stay under cover.

For Mr. Bush, struggling through the most casualty-ridden month in Iraq since the war began 13 months ago, the kind of operation now being contemplated is hardly the sort of painful choice his administration anticipated nearly a year after he declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq and the defeat of Saddam Hussein's government.

The president and his advisers, said officials familiar with the deliberations, are keenly aware that if the operation to root out the insurgents kills many civilians ‹ or simply appears to when reports are broadcast on Arab networks ‹ it could spark uprisings elsewhere around Iraq, from Baghdad even to some Shiite strongholds where tolerance of the American occupation has worn thin.

In Washington, officials still describe the fear of uprisings in Iraq as a theory, one they say may be overblown. But it clearly has Mr. Bush and his advisers deeply concerned. They have only 10 weeks to form an interim government, and it will be May, officials say, before the United Nations envoy charged to put together such a government, Lakhdar Brahimi, returns to Iraq.

Mr. Brahimi's efforts, officials concede, could be far more difficult if Falluja goes badly.

It was this growing concern, officials say, that led Mr. Bremer, who is to leave Iraq in 10 weeks after handing sovereignty over to Iraqis, to warn on Friday that "Iraq faces a choice."

His message was that the country could miss its best chance to establish a democratic government, and he used a starkly grimmer tone than his usual upbeat message about life returning to normal.

Mr. Bush is described by many officials as convinced that if the insurgents hold off American forces there, they will try to do the same in other Iraqi cities.

"The stakes are too high for us to leave," he said on Friday evening at a campaign event in Florida. "This is an historic moment. You see, a free society will be a peaceful society. A free society in the heart of the Middle East will begin to change the world for the better. No, they're trying to shake our will, but America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers."

During the past week, as a fragile and often violated cease-fire was declared around Falluja, American civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Washington sought to find a mix of patience and resolve to end the insurgency in the Sunni stronghold.

The chief Iraqi intermediary with the coalition forces has been Hajim al-Hassani, of the Iraqi Islamic Party. This mainly Sunni group has a place on the Iraqi Governing Council, but its position has been challenged by the events in Falluja.

Its credibility has been undermined because it could not prevent the Americans from fighting in Falluja and it has been accused of collaboration with the occupation authorities. Helping to avert an attack could restore some of its prestige.

Another person involved in the talks is the mayor of Falluja, Mahmoud Ibrahim. But it is unclear how much power he wields. Marine officers who have dealt with him say he is roundly disliked by many of the residents. He had been the mayor for several years under Saddam Hussein's rule. The political situation has been somewhat murky, with rival city councils appointed by American civilian and military officials, and it is unclear how Mr. Ibrahim remained mayor.

In any event, he told Marine officers earlier this week that he had no control over three sections of the city ‹ Jolan, Hayal Askeri and Shuhada ‹ which make up about half its area.

On the outskirts today, hundreds of people were still trying to get back to their homes despite the threat of imminent attack, but soldiers and marines at the checkpoints turned them back and allowed no one in.

Hundreds of other people were fleeing the city. The rule was that only families were being allowed out. At several points, young, military-age men were seen grabbing protesting children by the hand to make their way out past the checkpoints.

The American military surrounding Falluja ‹ and, indeed, all across Iraq ‹ took quiet and nearly invisible steps to prepare for an attack that increasingly seemed inevitable to commanders.

United States marines prepared for attack even as they were under orders to return fire only if threatened; Marine commanders said they had little doubt insurgents were likewise using the pause to dig in for combat.

All across Iraq, American and allied forces were repositioning and preparing for bombings, mortar attacks, ambushes and even popular uprisings in case an attack on Falluja prompted violence elsewhere, according to Pentagon and military officials.

Senior American commanders in the Middle East, in a parallel to officials in Washington, seemed to be exceedingly concerned about possible casualties in Falluja ‹ and how the operation to quell the insurgency would be played throughout the Arab world, as well.

And so military and civilian officials in Iraq began an "information operation," according to senior officials in Washington, to prepare the battlefield of public opinion.

On Friday, the senior Marine Corps general with troops at Falluja made clear that the clock was ticking on a settlement in Falluja short of armed intervention.

The officer, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, said insurgents had "days, not weeks" to surrender their weapons or face attack.

Behind the scenes, senior American officials reached out to members of the Iraqi Governing Council, some of whom had publicly criticized the initial combat missions to pacify Falluja after violence flared two weeks ago. The goal of the talks, Pentagon and military officials said, was to guarantee the Iraqis' support for an offensive to quell the insurgency in Falluja should all other attempts to pacify the town fail.

A final information campaign also was being prepared, senior officials said. Just before an allied offensive into Falluja, messages would be broadcast into the town urging all noncombatants to leave the city and seek refuge in designated areas where food, water, medicine and shelter would be provided by the American military.

[John Kifner contributed reporting from Falluja, Iraq, for this article.]