Democrat Sees ‘Provocative’ Plan as Invitation to Disaster

Democratic Sen. Jim Sasser on Saturday criticized President Reagan’s plan to protect Kuwaiti ships in the Persian Gulf as a provocation that could invite a disaster like the 1983 attack on U.S. Marines in Beirut.

Giving the Democratic response to Reagan’s weekly radio address, the Tennessee legislator--one of the most outspoken critics of the plan--said it is absurd to put U.S. flags on 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers while leaving U.S.-owned ships unprotected.

Referring to last week’s Iranian gunboat attack on a U.S.-owned tanker flying the Liberian flag, Sasser said, “That underscores the absurdity of the Administration’s provocative approach in the Persian Gulf.

“Here we had an attack on an American-owned ship on the high seas, but that ship did not have the protection of the United States Navy,” he said. “Many American-owned ships will be left unprotected while we marshal our forces in defense of a country that has cynically played our interests off against the Soviets. . . . Now I ask, where is the logic, where is the moral backbone behind that approach?”

The Administration plans to forge ahead with putting Kuwaiti tankers under U.S. protection despite a House vote last week to delay the action for 90 days. The Senate is to vote on a similar plan next Tuesday, but it has run into strong Republican opposition.

Sasser said that Congress strongly supports free access to the world’s oil supply and maintaining the U.S. presence in the gulf but added that the Administration appeared to have learned no lesson from its decision to send Marines into Beirut. In October, 1983, 241 Americans were killed in a suicide truck-bomb attack on the Marine barracks.

“If the Administration forgets the lessons of Beirut, we will be condemned to repeat one of the darkest and most painful moments in recent American history,” Sasser said.