U.S. Apparently Alone in Sanctions; Allies Are Cool : Administration Presents Case; ‘No Smoking Gun’

The Reagan Administration on Wednesday issued a 13-page white paper detailing its case against Libya, but an official conceded that “there is no smoking gun” to link Moammar Kadafi’s regime directly to international terrorism.

“We are obviously convinced,” a State Department official said. “What convinces us is circumstantial, but we think it is very strong. If by evidence you mean incontrovertible eyewitness accounts, you won’t get it.”

And other Administration officials, while generally supporting President Reagan’s decision to impose economic sanctions against Libya, privately expressed the concern that Reagan may have painted himself into a corner in the event of further Libyan-supported terrorism.

They said that the only remaining U.S. response may be military force--a step that many national security specialists in and out of government consider to be fraught with peril.

The Administration report on Libya listed 58 terrorist incidents--more than half of them carried out in Europe--in which U.S. officials said the Kadafi regime had been involved during the last six years.

Most recently, it said, Palestinian terrorists operating out of Libya attacked airline ticket counters in Rome and Vienna on Dec. 27, killing 15 travelers, including five Americans. That episode was the immediate cause of Reagan’s decision on Tuesday to cut all economic ties with Libya and on Wednesday to freeze Libyan assets in the United States.

Officials said similar evidence is being conveyed to U.S. allies in Western Europe to back Reagan’s request that they join in economic sanctions against the Tripoli government.

The white paper was issued in response to Reagan’s promise at a news conference Tuesday night to supply “irrefutable evidence” of Kadafi’s role in international terrorism. But the paper contained no photographs or other documentation.

Reagan Statement Discussed

A White House official who asked not to be named said the President may have “overpersonalized” his anger over the Rome and Vienna airport killings. As a result, he said, the President may have set the stage for a dangerous military escalation if Kadafi refuses to knuckle under.

Reagan has played his last peaceful card, the White House aide said. If the United States fails to persuade West European nations to join in the sanctions--as now appears likely--it could be faced with the unappealing choice of backing down or taking military action the next time it is called on to respond to Libyan-backed terrorism.

Defense Department officials said a military response would work only if the United States could identify terrorists operating out of Libya, strike them without hurting civilians and protect U.S. planes and ships near Libya. And they warned that Kadafi might respond to U.S. force by killing Americans in Libya.

But U.S. credibility could be eroded, the White House aide said, if Reagan followed his strong rhetoric with mild action.

“There is a danger point in the President’s approach,” a Republican consultant added. “He has created a situation where whatever action Kadafi takes next needs to be answered.”

A Defense Department official remarked that in the days immediately after the two airport attacks, it was the White House and State Department--not the Defense Department--that spoke most openly about possible military options.

“They seem to me to be zig-zagging over the last couple of weeks, issuing veiled warnings and then backing off,” the Pentagon official said. “They’re living in a fool’s paradise if they think they can muster public opinion (that way).”

The State Department white paper sought to tie Libya to the Abu Nidal Palestinian splinter group, which both U.S. and European authorities accuse of carrying out the Rome and Vienna attacks.

In addition, it accused Libya of terrorist attacks against its exiles in the United States and Europe and said that Kadafi had supplied both economic and military aid to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

The paper contained only two paragraphs in its section on “Libyan terrorism against the United States.” The first paragraph cited three speeches by Kadafi threatening to “export terrorism to the heart of America.” The other cited three incidents, the most recent of which took place in 1979.

The official who briefed reporters said the U.S. government was unable to provide aerial photographs of terrorist bases in Libya because the camps are not the sort of paramilitary installations that once flourished in Lebanon. Much of the terrorist training, he said, occurs at regular Libyan army facilities, which also train Libyan soldiers and policemen. Identifying a specific terrorist base, he said, is “like painting a moving train.”

The official also conceded that it is difficult to document Reagan’s claim at his news conference that 126 terrorist attacks have been thwarted because it is difficult to prove that something would have happened had U.S. action not been taken.

Other Administration officials said the list included such cases as a suspected plot to murder Libyan dissidents in the United States, a scheme to kill the U.S. ambassador to Rome and a planned human-bomb attack on the House of Representatives.

Robert Oakley, who heads the State Department’s anti-terrorism office, said the thwarted terrorist missions cited by the President included only 23 in the United States. Appearing on the “CBS Morning News,” Oakley said that 16 Libyans were detained briefly last May because investigators believed that they “were preparing to carry out some assassinations here in this country.”

“We chose to stop them before they could act,” Oakley said. “Therefore the evidence of assassination was not present, and they couldn’t be convicted.”

Question of Syria

The Administration chose to concentrate its sanctions on Libya even though the Abu Nidal organization also maintains an office in Syria. The State Department official said that the organization’s headquarters, and apparently Abu Nidal himself, moved from Damascus to Tripoli sometime last year.

When Abu Nidal was headquartered in Syria, the official said, the group focused its attacks on leaders of the mainline Palestine Liberation Organization and on Jordanian interests. Abu Nidal, who was expelled from the PLO in 1974, and Syria are both enemies of PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

When Abu Nidal moved to Libya, the official said, he added Egypt--Kadafi’s chief enemy in the Arab world--to his list of targets.

“Nobody can buy anybody in the Middle East, but you can rent people for a while,” the official said. He explained that Abu Nidal has his own reasons for attacking the PLO, Jordan and Egypt but seems to concentrate on the enemies of his patron of the moment.

Times staff writers Eleanor Clift, James Gerstenzang and Gaylord Shaw contributed to this story.