Soviets Urge Iraqi Forces to Withdraw : Reaction: The Kremlin condemns invasion and suspends all deliveries of arms to Baghdad.

The Soviet Union, the main supplier of arms to Iraq, condemned its invasion of Kuwait on Thursday and suspended all deliveries of weapons and other military equipment to Baghdad.

The Soviet Union demanded Iraq’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait and began drafting a joint call with the United States for an end to the invasion and the restoration of Kuwait’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, is scheduled to discuss the crisis today with Secretary of State James A. Baker III during a Baker stopover here en route back to Washington at the end of an Asian tour.

The Soviet Union was prepared “to take every measure and somehow stop” the conflict, Shevardnadze told reporters. “I see no reason why this conflict cannot be ended, and I hope that common sense will prevail.”

“The Soviet Union believes that no dispute, no matter how complex, can justify the use of force,” the Kremlin declared in a formal statement. “The Soviet Union is convinced that the elimination of dangerous tension in the Persian Gulf would be promoted by the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwaiti territory.

“The sovereignty, national independence and territorial integrity of Kuwait must be fully restored and defended.”

The Soviet Union warned in its statement that the conflict inevitably would add to the chronic crisis in the Middle East, making it even more difficult to resolve and working against the interests of the Arabs.

The Kremlin later backed up those words with a decision to halt arms shipments to Iraq. Although largely symbolic since Iraq is believed to have a vast arsenal of Soviet weapons, the move expressed more clearly Moscow’s view of Baghdad’s attack--as well as acknowledgement of its responsibility for having armed Iraq so heavily.

“In connection with the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi armed forces, the Soviet Union has decided to suspend supplies of arms and military hardware to Iraq,” the Soviet Foreign Ministry announced.

For more than two decades, the Soviet Union has been the principal supplier of arms to Iraq. The Iraqi army that rolled into Kuwait early Thursday was equipped with Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers, supported by Soviet artillery and rockets and had Soviet warplanes overhead and naval vessels offshore.

Although France has provided Iraq with new aircraft and Britain has made some sales, the Soviet Union was Iraq’s primary source of weapons throughout its 8-year war with Iran and in the period of rearmament that followed. Most of the $6.3 billion that Iraq owed the Soviet Union at the end of last year for foreign assistance was believed to be for arms.

Baker, who had met with Shevardnadze in the Siberian city of Irkutsk earlier on Thursday, had called on the Soviet Union to halt its sales of arms to Baghdad. Baker had continued with his Asian tour, proceeding to the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, before deciding to return to Washington via Moscow.

The two foreign ministers did not have sufficient information in Irkutsk for a full discussion of the crisis, Soviet officials said, but they had agreed to coordinate U.S. and Soviet actions at the United Nations in order to bring the conflict to an end.

“This development was a surprise to us,” Vitaly I. Churkin, a Shevardnadze aide, said later at a briefing in Moscow. “It is very difficult to elaborate a policy in just a few hours.”

Shevardnadze went into a series of crisis meetings immediately on his return to Moscow and then conferred by telephone with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who is vacationing in the Crimea.

Alexander Belonogov, one of Shevardnadze’s deputies, summoned the Iraqi ambassador, Ghafil Jassim Hussain, to the Foreign Ministry to repeat Moscow’s condemnation of the invasion and its call for Iraq’s immediate withdrawal from Kuwait in accordance with Thursday’s U.N. Security Council resolution.

Belonogov also met with the Kuwait ambassador, Abdulmohsin Yousef al Duaij, who asked for Soviet support in securing the withdrawal of Iraqi forces and was assured that Moscow would “act in accordance with the principles of respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs.”

Moscow has maintained friendly relations for many years with Kuwait, and the Soviet Union was clearly pained that the weapons it had sold one ally had been used against another.

“The latest developments in the Persian Gulf are strongly deplored by people here in Moscow,” a commentator on Radio Moscow said. “That a dispute primarily over oil prices, no matter how important they are to some states, should escalate into a military conflict and cause one Arab state to attack another is seen as an entirely unacceptable development by the Soviet public. . . .

“We in Moscow trust that the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait will be quickly resolved by peaceful means. We look to the United Nations Security Council and other international forums to play their part in promoting a speedy end to the hostilities between the two Arab states.”

But Igor Belayev, one of the Soviet Union’s leading specialists on the Middle East, said that he believed the invasion had little to do with an oil dispute as Iraq has contended.

“It was launched by Saddam Hussein in order to establish his country as the leading Arab military power in the region,” Belayev said of the Iraqi president. “The dispute over oil was clearly a pretext.

“Iraq has trampled on the territorial integrity of Kuwait, forgetting all the assistance it received from the Kuwaitis during its war with Iran which put Kuwait at risk of attack by the Iranians. . . .

“We created this monster with weapons deliveries,” Belayev added, “and now these weapons are being used against a small country that does not have the capacity of resisting.”

Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union has repeatedly condemned foreign intervention in other states and denounced the use of force to resolve international disputes, and Moscow has underlined that stand by criticizing its own use of force in the past in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan.