F-16 PILOT MISTAKEN IN IRAQ INCIDENT.

Byline: Philip Shenon The New York Times

An American jet fighter opened fire in southern Iraq when the pilot mistakenly believed that he had been targeted by an Iraqi radar installation, the Pentagon announced Sunday.

The pilot of the F-16 jet fired a missile Saturday after instruments in his cockpit indicated that an Iraqi radar site had locked onto his plane in preparation for an attack, the Pentagon's statement said.

``Subsequent analysis did not support the initial indications of radar activity,'' the Pentagon said.

Defense Department officials said that the episode, near the 32nd parallel southeast of the Iraqi town of Kut al Hayy, was under investigation and that it was unclear whether anyone on the ground had been killed or wounded.

The area is within the so-called ``no-fly'' zone, where the United States has forbidden Iraqi planes and helicopters to fly, and initial reports of the episode Saturday raised fears of new hostilities between Iraq and the United States, which patrols the zone.

The United States expanded the no-fly zone northward in September by about 60 miles, to the outskirts of the capital, Baghdad, to punish Iraq for its attacks against Kurdish territory in northern Iraq.

Iraq denied that the episode reported by the Pentagon on Sunday had taken place. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued in Baghdad that ``fabricating this false report is part of American-style electioneering,'' apparently a reference to the American presidential campaign.

The F-16 returned safely to its base in Saudi Arabia after the episode at about 12:30 p.m. local time Saturday.

The plane was assigned to the 4404th Wing at the Prince Sultan Air Base south of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where U.S. Air Force pilots and their planes were moved in the summer after the June 25 bombing of a military housing complex near the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran that killed 19 Americans.

In Tampa, Fla., the White House spokesman, Michael McCurry, told reporters that the pilot believed that he had been targeted by ground Iraqi radar and had fired at least one high-velocity anti-radiation missile, known as the HARM, in response. He said President Clinton had been briefed on the episode Saturday while campaigning in San Antonio.

On Sept. 4, Iraqi forces challenged American jets twice as the United States began patrols over the expanded no-fly zone. An Air Force F-16 pilot whose plane had been illuminated by an Iraqi radar fired a missile at the site, which then reportedly went silent.

The confrontations over the no-fly zone followed two separate strikes Sept. 3, when the United States fired a total of 44 cruise missiles against 15 Iraqi air-defense sites.