Jets Escort Shultz on Athens Flight : Security Increased for Secretary to Ward Off Possible Terrorist Attack

Turkish and Greek warplanes escorted the passenger jet carrying Secretary of State George P. Shultz from Ankara to Athens on Tuesday to prevent a possible Libyan attack in the wake of confrontations in the Gulf of Sidra.

The intense security precautions, which included heavy police protection on the ground, showed how seriously Washington is taking the possibility that Libya’s Col. Moammar Kadafi might attack Americans in other areas to make up for his losses in the gulf.

Kadafi ‘The Aggressor’

When the shooting started Monday, Shultz was far from the White House situation room, where the strategy was planned, but uncomfortably close to the Gulf of Sidra, where it was carried out. The secretary, talking to reporters during the Ankara-Athens flight, called Kadafi “the aggressor” in the confrontations and said the United States is determined to meet any challenge from Libya.

The military action has overshadowed the diplomatic purpose of his visit to Turkey, which ended Tuesday, and seems certain to become the focus of his stops in Greece today and Italy on Friday. Shultz failed to reach agreement with Turkey in efforts to extend U.S. military base rights in that country, but he said negotiations will continue.

The Turkish government made no official comment on the Gulf of Sidra fighting, but Greece and Italy issued statements deploring the violence. The Greek statement carefully avoided placing blame for the incident, dropping the anti-American tone that often has characterized Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s government.

But Shultz was left with the chore of explaining the U.S. action to the governments in Athens and Rome, which were skeptical if not openly critical of their North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally’s military response in the gulf.

“Greece and Italy are both maritime nations,” Shultz said. “They have a stake in being able to sail their ships in international waters, and they have a stake in not getting shot at. They should be standing up to applaud.”

Agrees With Plan

The secretary expressed total agreement with the Administration’s plan to test Kadafi’s assertion of ownership of the gulf, which the United States considers international waters, and he shrugged off suggestions that the naval operation might have been postponed until he returned home.

“If we start changing around our exercise schedule every time I take a trip or the President takes a trip or the secretary of defense takes a trip, we would never get anything done,” Shultz said.

The flight from Ankara to Athens brought Shultz’s plane--a Boeing 707 with a history of more than two decades of VIP flights entered in its logbook--within range of Libyan warplanes. Two Turkish air force fighters escorted the Shultz plane to the edge of Turkish airspace, where they were replaced by two Greek fighters.

Officials said U.S. Air Force planes were flying “picket duty” in the area, although the American aircraft were out of sight of the Shultz plane, while the Turkish and Greek jets flew almost wingtip-to-wingtip with the Shultz plane at times.

Police Guard Doubled

On the ground, the Turkish police contingent outside Shultz’s Ankara hotel was doubled Monday night. In Athens, flak-jacketed security forces with automatic rifles stood atop the terminal building when Shultz’s plane landed, and police were stationed six or seven to a block along the seven-mile route of his motorcade from the airport to his hotel.

Asked how the United States would respond to a Libyan-backed terrorist attack on Americans in Libya or elsewhere, Shultz said, “We don’t countenance threats or actions against American lives anywhere, and we make that very, very clear.”

But he declined to say if Washington would retaliate militarily for a terrorist attack. In the past, Shultz has advocated retaliation for terrorist assaults if it is possible to identify those responsible.