Announcements by the Bush administration last week struck the right tone in addressing its refusal to accept Iraq’s U.N.-required weapon’s declaration as anything near a complete accounting. Forceful, specific, clear in its implications yet repeatedly offering peaceful alternatives to war, administration officials are outmaneuvering Saddam Hussein by being forthright in their expectations and their intentions if conditions are not met. It should not be rattled now by threats from Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that Iraq had violated a United Nations resolution by turning over a deliberately false and incomplete list of its weapons, a “material breach” of the resolution. He was properly clear in setting a late January deadline and yet reporting where, specifically, Iraq’s document was lacking.

According to the State Department, for instance, U.N. inspectors concluded that Iraq did not verifiably account for, at a minimum, 2160 kilograms of growth media for anthrax or other biological agents, enough to produce 26,000 liters of anthrax – three times the amount Iraq declared; 1,200 liters of botulinum toxin; and, 5500 liters of clostridium perfrigens (most common agent of gas gangrene that also causes food poisoning) – 16 times the amount Iraq declared. It claims Iraq admits to developing new fuels for ballistic missiles it reports that it does not have. The 12,000-page declaration from Iraq makes no mention of its efforts to procure uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, according the State Department, which also wants more information on VX production, mustard-gas artillery and “hundreds, possibly thousands, of tons of chemical precursors” for biological weaponry.

At the same time U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, noting the same material breach, joined with chief inspector Hans Blix to emphasize Iraq’s failure, while unacceptable. does not have to lead to war. This more nuanced policy brought about a response from Iraq this week that it is “ready to deal” with the United States on these issues, though it had no more documentation to offer.

The Iraqi response tells the United States quite a lot about the corner it is in. Shooting down an unmanned U.S. spy plane and referring to the president as “little Bush” are distractions to the larger issue of compliance. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency reported yesterday that it has begun interviewing Iraqi scientists, a sign that Saddam Hussein still is cooperating despite the noise he is making, as is the fact that Iraq acknowledges the shortcomings in its declaration and is avoiding the scorched-earth policy that Washington feared. All good signs that a tough but flexible policy toward Iraq may still achieve U.S. aims of removing weapons of mass destruction without resorting to war.