France Joins Ranks of Nations Backing Saudis : Deployment: Mitterrand sends additional warships and helicopters to the area as a force that ‘can intervene.’

President Francois Mitterrand added France to the list of nations pledged to defend Saudi Arabia against an attack from Iraq on Thursday and sent additional warships and helicopters to the area as a force that “can intervene . . . against any aggression, any new aggression.”

“France hopes to see this problem solved by the Arab community, but if that proves impossible, France will assume her responsibilities,” Mitterrand told a news conference after an emergency meeting with members of his Cabinet.

He said he has ordered more French forces to the Persian Gulf “so that they can intervene at any time it becomes necessary.”

Mitterrand’s action, taken after several days of apparent hesitation, places France squarely at the side of the United States and Britain, which had already promised to defend the Saudi kingdom.

His decision is especially significant because France has been Iraq’s largest supplier of Western arms during the past 10 years, as well as an occasional political ally.

Mitterrand said he decided to act after it became clear that Iraq’s armed forces, which seized Kuwait last week, now pose a serious threat to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region.

Two French navy frigates are already in the gulf to help enforce a United Nations trade embargo against Iraq, with a destroyer on the way. But until Thursday the French had rebuffed suggestions that they take stronger measures.

The new French forces in the gulf will include the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc as well as one of the navy’s two aircraft carriers, officials said.

Mitterrand said France is sending supplies and technicians to Saudi Arabia--but no ground forces because “we have not been asked directly.”

Drawing a traditionally French distinction, he said that he is acting independently of the other Western powers, but still “associating her efforts with those of the other countries that are engaged.”

Mitterrand emphasized that France still hopes that action by the Arab League and the United Nations can solve the crisis.

However, a senior French official said later that he doubts the Arab League can furnish a solution because the organization is too weak to force an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

French analysts have mercilessly pointed out that their country has sold more than $5 billion worth of weaponry to Iraq over the past decade and that almost every major French politician has met cordially with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at one time or another.

But Mitterrand, asked about his government’s earlier friendship with Hussein, displayed no embarrassment. “You have forgotten that, at the time, there was a war between Iraq and Iran,” he said.

France has shown itself willing to play an independent military role in the Middle East before. In 1983, after Lebanese terrorists killed hundreds of U.S. and French troops with car bombs in Beirut, Mitterrand ordered an air strike against the terrorists’ suspected headquarters--an action the Reagan Administration refused to take.

In a sense, the crisis over Kuwait is forcing France, as well as the United States, to define its military role in the world after the end of the Cold War.

Mitterrand’s decision, and his emphasis on France’s “responsibilities,” indicates that he wants his government to be a major player in such events.

“We shouldn’t have the idea that there is a single policeman in the world,” former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing said in an interview, referring to the task the United States assumed during the 1950s and 1960s. “When the United States attempted to play that role, its costs were very high. . . . (But) there can be acts of aggression that the entire world condemns, as seems to be the case with Iran and Iraq.”