Washington ? The abrupt acceptance by Iraq’s foreign minister of renewed U.N. weapons inspections has unleashed a period of intense diplomatic maneuvering that will test the patience and skills of the Bush administration. Three principles should guide the policy professionals and the American public through the coming twists and turns:

1. The argument over inspections doesn’t begin until the fat guy with the moustache and the diamond-studded cufflinks sings.

Getting Saddam Hussein’s signature on a document that mandates “any time, anywhere, without notice” inspections is a necessary but not sufficient condition for resuming and cleaning up the rigged, cat-and-mouse game that inspections have always been.

2. The hunt for the equipment and scientists that the Iraqi dictator relies on to build a covert nuclear bomb is the urgent priority of resumed inspections. The United Nations must provide enforceable guarantees of protection for any Iraqi who comes forward with information on the nuclear program.

3. There will be no hiatus in U.S. military planning and preparation while the negotiations and potential inspections take place.

The Iraqis hope to delay and deflect. But their inspection ploy can backfire, as Saddam’s strategic gestures often do: It establishes the framework for the decision that President Bush has been holding off on military strikes. A breakdown of negotiations or inspections or an intelligence windfall showing fresh Iraqi defiance on its weapons program while pretending to negotiate can provide a clear and visible trigger for U.S. action.

Bush’s skepticism about Iraq’s intentions is well-founded. But this is a moment in which Washington must endure a time-limited diplomatic effort to hold Saddam to his word, if it can be obtained. That makes it possible then to hold the leaders of France, Russia and other powers to theirs.

These leaders have joined U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in saying Iraq will face severe consequences if it does not finally allow honest inspections and live up to the other undertakings it made to secure an end to the Gulf War. These leaders not George W. Bush will bear the responsibility for destroying the world body’s credibility if they countenance continued deceit and murderous behavior by the Iraqi Baathist command after this exercise.

But Bush must now avoid a central error committed by his father in dealing with Saddam at war’s end in 1991. American troops achieved a battlefield domination that was squandered in the political process of framing a flawed cease-fire that was never enforced by the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations.

Eager to claim victory, and misunderstanding the nature of the Iraqi dictator’s hold on power, Bush 41, Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell did not insist that Saddam personally take responsibility for the defeat of his army. He sent flunkies to deal with the Americans and immediately set about distancing himself from their action.

This symbolism is vital in totalitarian Iraq. Iraqis know that Saddam does not hesitate to fire or kill ministers or generals whose policy pronouncements or commitments become inconvenient to him. The foreign minister who floated the renewal of inspections answers only to Saddam, who incarnates the nation in his own mind. It is all personal to him.

After a 1975 interview with him in Baghdad, I wrote a long profile in which I traced his career as teenage assassin and his then embryonic campaign of genocide against the Kurds. The ruler was very upset with the piece, I was later told by one of his officials, because I had mentioned that he wore diamond-studded cufflinks while praising Arab socialism and sacrifice.

George W. Bush’s tough-minded challenge to the U.N. General Assembly caused Saddam to send out his foreign minister to blink for him by offering to discuss “practical arrangements” for resuming weapons inspections. The two-track Bush policy of applying pressure through diplomacy while continuing to push forward with intelligence and military options is yielding results.

The diplomatic and military pressures must continue to operate as a package. The Iraqi National Congress, the main opposition group, can identify 1,200 nuclear scientists, aides and other personnel involved in the nuclear weapons program. These Iraqi officials and their families must be guaranteed protection if the nuclear inspectors are to have any chance of success.

Saddam has for 11 years periodically sent out his aides to promise disarmament while he has consistently shown the Iraqi public in deed that his weapons of mass destruction will have to be pried from his cold dead fingers. He seems to have finally encountered an American president willing to take him at his deed.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.