6 Months After Sept. 11, Bush to Give Strategy for Intensified War

WASHINGTON, March 9 — President Bush will describe his broad strategy for the next stages of the war on terrorism on Monday, six months after the attacks on New York and Washington, suggesting that he may pursue the terrorist network of Al Qaeda even inside countries that do not ask for an American presence.

He will also declare, according to officials familiar with the speech, that inaction will not be an option in dealing with countries assembling weapons of mass destruction, a clear reference to the administration's strategy in dealing with Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

While Mr. Bush has publicly demanded that inspectors be allowed into Iraq, officials made clear on Friday that they would insist on a near constant presence in the country and virtually unlimited access to any site where they have the mildest suspicions that work on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons may be under way.

In an interview in her office on Friday, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said "the Iraqis didn't just agree in '91 to have inspections, they agreed not to have weapons of mass destruction," referring to the agreements struck at the end of the Persian Gulf war. "So anything that is done with them would have to make sure they don't have weapons of mass destruction. And with three years of no inspections that's very tough, very hard."

Ms. Rice's comments, combined with those of another senior government official who said the administration would insist on "the kind of go anywhere, any time sort of inspection regime" Mr. Hussein has always refused, strongly suggest that the Bush administration is moving rapidly toward an inspection crisis with Iraq by late spring.