WASHINGTON, March 3 — The White House declared today that Iraq's efforts to destroy missiles and convince the United Nations that it was cooperating with weapons inspectors was "the mother of all distractions." But inside the administration, officials feared efforts to put additional military and diplomatic pressure on Saddam Hussein were becoming more complicated.

Iraq destroyed six more missiles today and the United Nations team in Baghdad issued mild praise for its sudden interest in disarmament, however fragmentary. But the Bush administration declared that Mr. Hussein was, by his action, admitting that he lied in a declaration to the United Nations in December.

"Here's the Catch-22 that Saddam Hussein has put himself in," Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said today. "He denied he had these weapons, and then he destroys things he says he never had. If he lies about never having them, how can you trust him when he says he has destroyed them?"

At the same time, administration officials refused today to describe the benchmarks Mr. Hussein would have to pass to convince them that his disarmament was real, suggesting again that there was nothing he could do to persuade them he has got rid of all his weapons.

The Pentagon ordered about 60,000 more troops to the region, bringing to over 250,000 the number of American forces deployed on land, sea and at airfields within striking distance of Iraq, officials said today. That has long been considered a magic number — the quarter-million troops the military would like in place before any invasion begins.

Here and in Ankara, the administration sought to reverse a narrow vote in the Turkish Parliament on Saturday that appeared to dash hopes of opening a second front, in the north, against Iraq. But Turkish lawmakers said today that it could be two weeks before they reconsidered the decision, a delay that might force American officials to consider other plans.

While the issues surrounding basing troops in Turkey might seem to argue for a delay in military action, both White House and Pentagon officials say that President Bush is as determined as ever to move forward quickly, and is not likely to be distracted by either logistical or diplomatic obstacles.

But in private, administration officials conceded that both Mr. Hussein's actions and Turkey's refusal — at least so far — to allow American forces to strike Iraq from its territory had greatly complicated diplomacy, troop deployments and, potentially, the timetable for carrying out the war.

At a breakfast with reporters in Stuttgart, Germany, Gen. James L. Jones, the commander of all American forces in Europe, said that Turkey's refusal was not an "absolute showstopper," but added, "Any military planner would like to have more options than one."

White House officials hoped that an 11 percent drop in the Turkish stock market today — prompted by fears that American aid tied to the planned military deployment would disappear — would change the political dynamic.

"It's Turkey," a senior official said. "The negotiating never stops."

In the absence of an agreement, which White House officials sounded pessimistic about winning at this late date, the Pentagon accelerated action on a blueprint for prosecuting a war against Iraq without Turkish bases.

Although no decisions had been made and no new orders issued, senior Pentagon officials said the 101st Airborne Division could receive a significant change of mission as a result of Turkey's refusal.

Rather than send the Fourth Infantry Division into northern Iraq though Turkey, the air assault troops from the 101st and its fleet of attack helicopters would arc northwest out of Kuwait, more than 500 miles away, to strike targets there.

Within the administration, some officials are arguing that whether President Bush wins or loses a second Security Council resolution next week declaring that Iraq has failed to disarm, he should move ahead quickly with an invasion of the country.

But others argue that he should first wait until the equipment bobbing off Turkey steams around to Kuwait, a process that could take more than a week.

At the United Nations today, the 10 nonpermanent members of the Security Council met at the Mexican mission in the late afternoon to hear the Canadian ambassador promote his government's compromise proposals. Those proposals envisage giving Iraq a deadline, possibly March 28, to meet a series of benchmarks set by the Security Council on outstanding disarmament issues.

But the United States, Britain and Spain have rejected that approach, and their resolution declares that Iraq has already missed its last chance to comply with Council resolutions. So far, the two groups seem at a standoff. But one Council diplomat declined today to rule out the Canadian model as a basis for future compromise.

The Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, was in Mexico City over the weekend discussing the crisis.

To win Council approval, a resolution must receive at least nine votes with no vetoes. The six votes considered uncommitted at the moment are Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan.

In Iraq, United Nations weapons inspectors monitored the destruction of six more Al Samoud 2 short-range missiles as well as the first two warheads, said Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for the inspectors. That brings the number of missiles destroyed since Saturday to 16 of a stock of 100 already built and a further 20 in various stages of construction.

Mr. Fleischer was unimpressed. "It is insufficient," he said. "It is not complete. It is not total."

The Iraqi government told the United Nations that it would provide a new report on the destruction of its VX nerve gas and anthrax stocks within a week, Mr. Ueki said. Why it failed to include that information in its "final" report in December is unclear, however, and Mr. Fleischer seized on that failure today to ask, "How do you know this is not the mother of all distractions, diversions, so the world looks in one place while he buries them in another?"

As officials in Washington and Baghdad argued via television, American and British warplanes raided southern Iraq overnight on Sunday, extending their targets in the southern no-flight zone to include any threats to the troops massing in Kuwait.

Iraq said six civilians were killed and 15 were wounded, although it denied reporters the chance to visit the site or interview residents. The United States military said the planes struck air defense targets in response to antiaircraft fire.

In Washington, military officials said that of some 60,000 troops ordered over the weekend to begin moving toward the Persian Gulf region, 26,000 were from the First Armored Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., and in Germany; 24,000 from the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex.; and 10,000 from the Second Armored Cavalry, based at Fort Polk, La.. President Bush visited the First Calvary in early January, from his ranch in Texas, and told the troops that they might soon be called upon to make sacrifices for the country.

Senior officials said it was likely that those large forces, receiving their deployment orders late in the process, would form a later wave for any assault on Iraq or the spine of a postwar stabilization force.

In addition to assigning the 101st to a vanguard position in the offensive, officials described a range of options that included dropping forces into northern Iraq by helicopter or parachute to secure airfields that could serve as forward bases. Cargo planes could then ferry tanks and other armored vehicles, although not in the quantity that could dash overland from Turkey.