With every week that passes, the relationship between Iraq and the United Nations becomes more fraught.

The US-British bombing raids in December; the sporadic Iraqi challenges to the no-fly zones; the fresh allegations that US agents infiltrated Unscom to gather intelligence: all these ingredients combine to make prospects of any peaceful end to Iraq's isolation increasingly unlikely.

With major military action behind them - for the time being, at least - Washington and London now seem intent on rejoining the propaganda battle.

It is a battle in which President Saddam Hussein is confident he can hold his own.

There is no question that Saddam Hussein has outplayed the UN at every stage of the complex diplomatic game that has unravelled over recent months:

• He has made strategic withdrawals when it suited him

• He has effortlessly stymied Unscom and humiliated its chief, Richard Butler

• Washington has failed to demonstrate that its punitive military strikes actually achieved anything substantial

• The Iraqi leader has succeeded in splitting the permanent five on the UN Security Council

Playing to the Arab gallery

There is all to play for in Arab opinion, however. Primarily because of its perceived role as unquestioning champion of Israel, Washington is deeply mistrusted by most Arabs - however much their government might owe the Americans.

There is also an instinctive and historical sympathy for fellow-Arabs under pressure from outside.

But Saddam Hussein, it now seems, has pushed his luck too far.

An Iraqi soldier guards a UN building in Baghdad, scene of a student protest backing the Iraqi president

Egypt particularly has had enough. Tuesday's comments in the Egyptian media were strikingly harsh. Egyptian radio denounced the Iraqi president as a murderer and gangster, the worst leader the Arab nation had ever known, even in its worst periods of decadence.

In the context of pan-Arab solidarity, Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait still ranks as a great betrayal and, perhaps, a terminal blow to the collective identity.

But there is still no answer to the question hanging over Washington's long-term game-plan for Iraq.

The vague answers seem to boil down to a policy of containment and - by supporting various opposition elements - undermining Saddam Hussein.

But both have been tried before, and both failed.

Undeclared war

The prospects for the UN inspection regime in Iraq certainly look bleak, at least in its present incarnation.

With Baghdad and Washington already in a state of undeclared war, the Iraqis have nothing to lose and everything to gain by refusing ever to allow Unscom back into the country - especially if, as many weapons experts believe, Iraq can rebuild its biological and chemical weapons capabilities in a matter of months or even weeks.

Ultimately, the propaganda battle is a hard one for the Americans and their British allies to win, in the sense that it is not likely to succeed in itself in overthrowing the Iraqi leader.

Unlike his American and British opponents, Saddam Hussein does not have tiresome factors like elections or opinion polls to worry about.

His unaccountability - and the fact that military and civilian losses barely concern him at all - enable him to take a very long view, while his adversaries are constantly compelled by media and popular pressure to demonstrate almost instantaneous results.

Nevertheless, Saddam Hussein has not won - because there is no hope at all that sanctions will be lifted in the near future.