U.S. FIGHTER FIRES MISSILE AT IRAQI SITE.

Byline: Associated Press 

A U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter plane fired a missile Saturday at an Iraqi radar site after the jet was locked on electronically while in the ``no-fly'' zone over southern Iraq, the Pentagon said.

But the White House, explaining a lengthy delay in announcing the strike, said it was still unclear whether the plane was ``locked on'' by Iraqi radar.

The F-16 returned safely to its base in Saudi Arabia, and it was not immediately known if the Iraqi site was damaged, said Capt. Bryan Salas, a Pentagon spokesman.

The incident occurred about noon local time (8 a.m. PST) Saturday. An investigation was under way, said the Pentagon, which confirmed the strike about 18 hours after it occurred.

White House press secretary Mike McCurry, traveling with President Clinton in Tampa, Fla., said Clinton had been briefed early Saturday on the incident by a member of the National Security Council staff.

McCurry said ``there are no indications of changes in the status of anti-missile deployment'' by Iraq, but he referred reporters to the Pentagon for further details on the incident.

Reading a statement, Salas said the F-16 ``fired a HARM (high-speed anti-radiation) missile at a radar site in southern Iraq after the aircraft was illuminated during a routine Southern Watch mission.''

Since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the United States and its allies have maintained a no-fly zone over southern Iraq.

First word of the incident was reported by The Washington Times in today's editions and only then acknowledged by the Pentagon and White House.

McCurry denied that the delay was designed to protect Clinton from political fallout just before the Tuesday's presidential election. But he struggled to explain why the incident wasn't announced sooner, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that he had assumed the Pentagon announced it earlier in the day.

McCurry, as Clinton's top spokesman, coordinates news releases with all federal agencies, including the Pentagon.

Asked about the delay, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta said, ``I think they were waiting to see whether he (the F-16 pilot) was locked on to'' by Iraqi radar. And, he said, ``they don't know the answer to that.''

The missile firing was the first of its kind since Sept. 4, when Iraqi forces confronted U.S. pilots twice as they began their patrols over an expanded no-fly zone for Iraqi aircraft that Washington unilaterally declared the day before.

An Iraqi air defense radar site illuminated an Air Force F-16 with its signal, a potential precursor to firing a surface-to-air missile. The warplane responded by unleashing an anti-radar missile, and the site went silent, Defense Secretary William Perry said then.

Clinton vowed to stand tough against such Iraqi threats, saying, ``We will do whatever we have to do in the future to protect our pilots.''

To reinforce the buffer zone between Iraq and its neighbors, Clinton announced Sept. 3 that the no-fly zone would be expanded about 60 miles farther north, to the 33rd parallel. That would take it to the suburbs of Baghdad, where a defiant Saddam Hussein ordered his armed forces to shoot down any foreign aircraft.

The confrontations over the no-fly zone followed two separate strikes by a total of 44 cruise missiles against 15 Iraqi air-defense sites.

The strikes against Iraqi air defense sites were sparked by Saddam's attacks on the Kurds in the north.

Iraq rebuilt part of its surface-to-air missile network in southern Iraq last month within two weeks of the U.S. missile attacks, according to a senior U.S. military officer. It was unclear if the site attacked Saturday was one such rebuilt installation.