Iraq’s Roundup of Americans Greatly Limits U.S. Options : Policy: The Administration expands its crisis task force to include specialists on counterterrorism.

The Iraqi decision to round up more than two dozen Americans in Kuwait adds a chilling new dimension to the Persian Gulf crisis and sharply complicates the options available to President Bush.

Although their fate remains unclear, the fact that American citizens have been detained by Iraqi authorities raises the prospect that they could be used to blunt any U.S. response to the invasion of Kuwait, according to experts on the region.

“The Iraqis are engaged in terrorism now,” Robert Kupperman, a Washington-based analyst, said. “If (Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein has miscalculated and is feeling frightened, he now has other forms of retribution.”

In an indication of the changed equation, the Bush Administration quietly moved for the first time Monday to expand its crisis task force to include government specialists in counterterrorism.

The Administration pointedly declined to describe the captives as hostages--a move that experts said was a deliberate effort to avoid inflaming the situation. The experts added that Iraq too is unlikely ever to use the “H-word.”

But as President Bush moves to tighten the coils around Hussein, the abrupt Iraqi action leaves Americans caught at the fulcrum of the crisis, dashing Administration hopes of spiriting its citizens from the scene and raising the potential stakes in any U.S. military moves.

Apart from the 28 U.S. passport holders rousted from three downtown hotels Monday, an unspecified number of others have been gathered in a ballroom in the Kuwaiti capital, and at least 11 more have been taken to Baghdad and are now being held in an Iraqi hotel.

Nearly 3,000 additional Americans remain unconfined but essentially trapped in Kuwait and have no means to leave the country, now occupied by Iraqi troops. Most of the Americans are oil workers; others include businessmen, journalists and tourists.

A senior Administration official said the presence of the Americans has made Bush and his advisers particularly wary of any military option involving confrontation with Iraqi forces because it would run the risk of an enormous loss of U.S. civilian as well as military lives.

That dilemma has been compounded by the taking of the new detainees, analysts said. With Americans at risk--and Iraqi motives still a mystery--U.S. crisis managers may be forced to ascribe to the worst intentions.

“We don’t know that these are hostages,” said Brian Jenkins, a leading terrorism expert who is managing director of Crowell Associates in Los Angeles. “And even if they were, it would be to nobody’s advantage to refer to them as such.

“But as we contemplate these moves,” Jenkins added, “this becomes part of the equation. It is something that we have to reckon with.”

Experts said the motivations for the Iraqi roundup could range from an isolated decision by a commander acting in the chaos of war to a deliberate effort by Hussein to secure insurance against American attack.

Another interpretation is that the move is a signal in an escalating war of nerves--a case, Jenkins suggested, “in which we huff and puff and rattle sabers, and the Iraqis do something like this to remind us that they have some power too.”

Whatever the motivation, the Iraqi grab Monday of nearly 400 foreigners, including the 28 Americans, represents a troubling development in the chronicles of war, in which belligerent nations as a rule have made extensive efforts to repatriate those caught in the cross-fire.

Although analysts cautioned that it would be premature to draw comparisons, they said the Iraqi action is most reminiscent of the Iranian government-sanctioned seizure of American hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Regarding the latest incident, in which the foreigners were last seen being loaded into buses headed toward Iraq, Bush Administration officials said Monday they regard the step as a serious breach of international conduct.

But in describing the Americans as “detainees” rather than hostages, the Administration sought to put the action in the most favorable possible light as part of a strategy designed to minimize the crisis at home and avoid unnecessary insult to Hussein, outside experts said.

At the same time, they suggested that Hussein himself is unlikely ever to label any American citizens as hostages because such a statement could limit his options to release them in the future.

But there is little doubt in the minds of those who study hostage-taking that the Iraqi move represents at least a tentative effort to shield the nation from military or perhaps even economic retribution.

“As there is more evidence that this conflict is going to escalate, it’s not at all surprising that Iraq is doing this,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica.

Administration officials said the move may have at least thwarted a developing plan to evacuate Americans by chartered airplanes that would seek permission to land in Kuwait. They confirmed that the U.S. military Delta Force and other hostage rescue teams had been moved into the region, but said the large number of Americans still stranded would limit their utility.

“This is not just going into a hotel room,” one well-placed source cautioned.

A State Department official said U.S. embassies in Baghdad and Kuwait have begun to conduct “welfare and whereabouts inquiries” by telephone in an effort to track down Americans in the region.

But the official conceded that telephone lines within Kuwait remain “very bad.” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said that for most of the approximately 3,000 Americans in the country, “I don’t have anything specific other than that they’re there.”

Most of the Americans in Kuwait are employees of American firms that do contract work for oil companies, including state-owned Kuwait Oil. The bulk are technical personnel, a State Department official said, and are located at oil drilling sites around the country.

The largest contractor for Kuwait Oil is Santa Fe International of Alhambra, Calif. The company has confirmed that eight of its employees are among the Americans already held in Baghdad. In addition, there are a small number of Americans in Kuwait who are employees of various airlines or are married to Kuwaiti citizens.

The daughter of one of the 11 American oil workers picked up by invading Iraqi forces and brought to Baghdad last week said in a telephone interview from Harmony, Tex., on Monday that her father is “in daily contact with the embassy there.”

But “as far as anything else, we just don’t know,” said Karen Amos, whose father, Charles Amos, is being held in the Oberoi Rashid Hotel in the Iraqi capital.

“It’s real tough right now,” Karen Amos said. She added that the State Department “tries to answer as many questions as they can and give as much hope as they can. But as far as telling us when Daddy can leave--they just don’t know.”

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.