5 YEARS AFTER DEFEAT, IRAQ HAS REBUILT ITS ARMY.

Byline: Neil MacFarquhar The New York Times

The deployment of Iraqi armed forces in northern Iraq since last week to back a Kurdish faction signals that President Saddam Hussein, five years after the Persian Gulf War, has revived his conventional ground forces to the point where they are capable of embarking on major military offensives, diplomats and military analysts say.

To be sure, the Iraqi military is at least 50 percent leaner than it was on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq boasted of 1 million men under arms, 5,000 battle tanks and 700 aircraft - not to mention a deadly arsenal of chemical, biological and nascent nuclear weapons that could be harnessed to ballistic missiles.

But through a combination of cannibalization, smuggling and rebuilding a sprawling network of military industries, the Iraqi army is again strong enough to be capable of enveloping all Iraq in its grasp. And, analysts said, were it not for the presence of Western armies in the neighborhood, it could roll through Kuwait with ease, as it did in 1990.

``Five years after a major defeat at the hands of the Americans, we are seeing a new generation of the Iraqi army,'' said Ahmed Alawi, a senior official with the Iraqi opposition who escaped to Turkey after Saddam's forces entered Irbil in the Kurdish safe haven in northern Iraq on Aug. 31. ``The commanders, the officers have all been changed, and Saddam has rebuilt a lot of his damaged or destroyed weapons.''

As early as October 1994, the Iraqi leader indicated that he was again ready to move his troops in battle formation, briefly marching 70,000 men to the border with Kuwait and prompting a major American deployment. But it was only with the incursion last week that Saddam affirmed his readiness to use his restored might to roll back some of the restrictions on his forces imposed after the Gulf War cease-fire.

``In 1994 he was in bluff mode,'' said Paul Beaver of Jane's Defense Weekly. ``He was thinking, let's see what happens if I pull their chain, let's see if they will wriggle. What we see in northern Iraq is an organization in full command of its faculties.''

Analysts said Iraq's ability to field a presentable fighting force in the few years since the Gulf War resulted from a number of factors. First, the allied estimate of how much weaponry was destroyed in the war was inflated, especially when it came to conventional ground forces.

Second, there is a question of scale. Before the war, Saddam was building a military industry capable of sustaining 1 million men under arms, so he was able to use the immense amount of equipment and spare parts left over to equip a smaller force of 300,000 men.

Third, although much of the U.N.-led effort in restricting Iraq's armed forces concentrated on finding and eliminating weapons of mass destruction - U.N. inspectors said this month that stocks of sarin nerve gas and mustard gas and possibly biological agents remain unaccounted for - the cease-fire terms allow Iraq to manufacture what it needs for a conventional army.

It has the resources to refit tanks, build rockets with a range of under 90 miles or produce all the AK-47 assault rifles it needs. Jane's estimates that 200 weapon and other military establishments function across Iraq.