Iraq Lied About Pullout From Kuwait, Bush Says : Invasion: U.S. and its allies will not allow Baghdad to install a ‘puppet regime,’ the President insists. The military front is quiet.

Angrily declaring that Iraq had lied about withdrawing its forces from Kuwait, President Bush said Sunday that the United States and its allies will not allow Baghdad to get away with installing a “puppet regime” in Kuwait.

“This will not stand,” the President declared. “Nobody is willing to accept anything less than total withdrawal . . . (and) no puppet regime.”

As the military crisis in Kuwait entered its third day without any major movement on the military front, the Bush Administration stepped up the diplomatic war, with the President privately contacting leaders around the world and increasing the pressure on Saudi Arabia and Turkey to shut down the pipelines vital to Iraqi oil exports.

Responding to reporters’ questions as he returned to the White House from his Camp David retreat, Bush indicated that he is making progress in his efforts to enlist worldwide support for an economic embargo of Iraq. He added that he had spoken with the deposed emir of Kuwait and given him “certain assurances” but did not say what they were.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon disclosed that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney will leave for the Persian Gulf soon to discuss the crisis with Saudi Arabian officials, and Bush said that “intensive diplomatic activity is taking place. . . . There seems to be a united front out there that says Iraq, having committed brutal, naked aggression, ought to get out (of Kuwait) and that this concept of installing a puppet regime will not be acceptable.”

Adding that his options remain “wide open,” Bush also pointedly noted that he had been conferring at Camp David with his senior military advisers and would be meeting today with Manfred Woerner, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The President refused to comment on options for military intervention against Iraq and would not confirm reports that elite Delta Force commandos and other special forces have already been dispatched to the Middle East in case they are needed to rescue Americans trapped or taken hostage in Kuwait.

While White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that 11 American oil field workers captured by Iraqi forces during the invasion are safe and “in good shape” after arriving in Baghdad, concern over the well-being of Americans still in Kuwait was heightened by reports that 46 other foreigners, including 11 Americans, are being held by Iraqi forces at a hotel in Kuwait city.

A State Department official said the Americans were taken from their rooms at the Sheraton Hotel by Iraqi soldiers and, as of late Saturday night, were being held along with 35 other foreigners in the hotel ballroom. He said that he had no further information.

However, despite veiled threats by the new Kuwaiti regime to retaliate against foreign nationals in the event of an attack on Iraq, Bush said that the nearly 4,000 Americans believed to be in Kuwait do not appear to be in any “imminent danger at the moment.”

But alluding to the successful rescue of Americans in Liberia by U.S. Marines overnight, Bush added: “You know how I feel about the protection of American life and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to protect it.”

Bush said that there is “no evidence” that Iraq’s massive invasion force--estimated at more than 100,000 men and 2,000 tanks--had begun to withdraw from Kuwait on Sunday as Iraqi officials had said they would do. “Iraq lied once again,” the President said.

“These are outlaws, international outlaws and renegades,” Bush said of the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “I want to see the United Nations move soon with Chapter VII sanctions and I want to see the rest of the world join us, as they are in overwhelming numbers, to isolate Saddam Hussein.”

Asked how the United States, even in concert with its allies, could reverse what many analysts already believe is a fait accompli by forcing Iraq to dismantle its puppet government and withdraw from Kuwait, Bush snapped: “Just wait, watch and learn.”

But while the President insisted that he would settle for nothing less than total withdrawal, at least two Administration officials suggested that the United States might have to be satisfied with Iraq’s staying out of Saudi Arabia.

“At the moment we have a two-pronged approach,” said one Administration official. “One is containment, one is getting Iraq out of Kuwait. But if we decide not to send in the Army, then we may have to realize that it’s untenable to get them (Iraq) out.”

Another senior U.S. official added in private that containment might be the best that the combined pressures of the outside world could achieve short of massive military intervention--”but we don’t want it to appear that way.”

The President’s remarks were couched in some of the toughest terms he has used since Iraq invaded Kuwait early Thursday morning, touching off the first major crisis of the post-Cold War era and fueling fears that an attack on Saudi Arabia may be next. U.S. officials and lawmakers in Congress have warned that an invasion of Saudi Arabia, which supplies 15% of the United States’ oil imports, would almost certainly trigger military retaliation by the United States. U.S. contingency plans reportedly include air strikes against Iraqi industrial complexes and oil installations.

House Armed Services Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) repeated that warning Sunday, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” that an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia would make U.S. military intervention “inevitable.”

Aspin said that while U.S. ground forces could be dispatched in a “high risk” operation to block an Iraqi advance against Saudi oil fields, the most likely option would be air strikes against Baghdad and other targets deep within “the Iraqi homeland.”

However, while neither the President nor other White House officials would rule anything out, Bush made it clear that the emphasis, for the moment, still lies on diplomacy. Those efforts received a major boost Sunday when Japan announced that it will join a boycott of oil from Iraq and Kuwait and will embargo all exports to those countries until the crisis is resolved.

Bush praised the Japanese decision before rushing off to receive a telephone call from Turkish President Turgut Ozal, whose cooperation is regarded as one of the most indispensable elements to the success of any oil embargo.

With its southern port of Basra still not functioning as a result of the damage it suffered during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq’s main means of exporting oil is through two slender pipelines. One runs south into Saudi Arabia, where it connects with a Saudi line leading to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The other extends north into Turkey and the Mediterranean port of Iskenderum.

Particularly if combined with a blockade to keep Kuwaiti tankers from leaving the Persian Gulf, the closing of those two pipelines would effectively deny Iraq any means of exporting oil.

However, Turkey, which receives most of its oil from Iraq and also earns more than $200 million annually in transit fees from the pipeline, is under heavy pressure to keep the pipeline open.

Another weak--and even more critical link--in what Bush said is the emerging international consensus to punish Iraq is Saudi Arabia. The nation is believed by U.S. officials to be waivering between cooperating with the United States and appeasing the Iraqis, whose massive invasion force was reported by U.S. intelligence sources Sunday to be poised within five miles of the Saudi border with Kuwait.

Acknowledging that Saudi participation is the key link, U.S. officials have said that there is little Washington can do to effectively punish Iraq if the traditionally timid Saudis continue to funnel Iraqi oil to the outside world or continue to withhold landing rights and other forms of military cooperation with the United States.

Fitzwater said that Bush had been in telephone contact with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd on Saturday, but it was not clear whether their conversation occurred after a Saudi attempt to mediate a diplomatic solution to the crisis fell through. That attempt ended with the abrupt cancellation of an Arab summit meeting that was to have taken place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday.

Bush said he was “disappointed” that the Arab attempt to solve the crisis “has obviously failed.” He also expressed disappointment with remarks by King Hussein of Jordan, who on Saturday defended Iraq by calling the condemnation of its invasion of Kuwait “premature.”

“I want to see the Arab states join the rest of the world in condemning this outrage and doing what they can to get Saddam Hussein out,” Bush said. “. . . I am disappointed to find any comment by anyone that apologizes or appears to condone what’s taken place.”

As Bush huddled with his advisers in the White House, juggling two major crises--one in Kuwait and the other in Liberia--the U.N. Security Council met informally in New York to consider a Western resolution barring all imports from Iraq and Kuwait and banning the sales of all weapons and other goods except humanitarian aid to Iraq.

Binding on all states provided it is passed by at least nine of the Security Council’s 12 members, the embargo would mark the first time that the United Nations has imposed broad economic sanctions against a country since it voted to isolate the rebel British colony of Southern Rhodesia in the 1960s.

Supported by at least four of the council’s five permanent members, the resolution is expected to be passed today. China, the fifth permanent member, may not vote for it, but has promised not to veto it, diplomatic sources said.

Administration officials said that passage of the resolution will give Bush a major boost in the effort to give international sanction to the drive to punish Iraq. However, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, making another appeal for U.S. military intervention, expressed skepticism Sunday.

“Economic sanctions are going to take months and months to have any effective return, and there is no guarantee they will,” Ambassador Saud Nasir al Sabah said on ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley.” Saddam Hussein, he said, “can understand only force.”

Times staff writers Don Shannon, at the United Nations, and Maura Reynolds and Robin Wright, in Washington, contributed to this story.

Critical Border Region Kuwait and Saudi Arabia jointly exploit oil fields straddling their border. This formerly disputed zone, indicated by dots, was split in half by a 1988 agreement between the two countries.