Air Embargo Seen as Largely Symbolic : Boycott: Very few goods have entered Iraq by plane, and the nation has no ability to resupply itself this way.

WASHINGTON —  The United Nations’ declaration of an air embargo against Iraq is a major symbolic move to tighten the international economic boycott of Saddam Hussein’s government, but it is unlikely to significantly tighten the noose drawn by the land and sea embargo, U.S. experts said Tuesday.

Very few goods have been entering Iraq by air and, even in the absence of an embargo, Iraq had no ability to resupply itself by airplane, according to U.S. analysts.

Air traffic may have been helpful to Iraq on “specialized items” over the last several weeks but “won’t replace food” that normally would have entered the country by either ship or truck, one analyst said.

The United States was able to keep West Berlin alive through an airlift in 1961, analysts noted, but Iraq’s population of 17.5 million is far larger than Berlin’s was at the time, and Iraq does not possess the sort of vast fleet of airplanes that the United States used in that effort.

On the other hand, officials say, even with the embargo, a pilot who is determined to fly cargo into Baghdad will be able to do so.

“There are complications in an air embargo that you don’t have in a sea blockade,” said one senior Administration official. “You shoot the rudder or propeller off a ship, and it doesn’t sink. You can’t disable an aircraft that way.”

The United States and its allies have absolutely no intention of shooting down commercial aircraft, the official said, adding: “You have to have voluntary compliance.”

The main step in voluntary compliance will be for nations that border Iraq to close their airspace to Baghdad-bound flights and for ground controllers in world airports to refuse to allow airplanes to take off if they are trying to carry goods to Iraq.

Those measures will suffice to cut off the vast bulk of commercial air traffic, because pilots and owners of air fleets will not be willing to take the risk of flying without air and ground control.

As a practical matter, one senior Arab diplomat said, “if there are 10 airplanes going in, we can definitely stop eight” because their pilots will choose not to take off in violation of the embargo. “The two pilots who will be instructed to fly anyway” will get through, he added, but “a ratio of two to eight, I think, is acceptable.”

Any nations that choose to violate the embargo would risk world disapproval and potentially could find themselves the targets of a secondary embargo that is already under consideration.

Tuesday’s resolution does allow some airplanes to enter Iraq legally. Under the terms of the resolution, pilots flying to Iraq will be required to land somewhere else first and allow their airplanes to be searched. The searches will be designed to ensure that planes are not carrying any cargo other than food or medicine that has been approved by the special U.N. committee that considers “humanitarian” emergencies.

Airplanes carrying passengers in or out of Baghdad will also be allowed to continue.

Although the embargo will not have a major practical impact, U.S. officials welcomed the step as another way of solidifying the international coalition against Iraq, believing that each time the Security Council votes another resolution against Iraq, the world community is shown to be more determined to force the Iraqis to withdraw from Kuwait. The declaration of the air embargo is the eighth resolution condemning Iraq that the Security Council has passed since the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

For that reason, the Bush Administration already is laying the groundwork for what is likely to be the next resolution in the sequence--a measure to threaten a “secondary embargo” against countries that have violated the Iraq trade ban in the past.