Gorbachev Urges Arabs to ‘Put Out the Fire’ : Soviet Union: In his first comment on Persian Gulf crisis, he denies that Moscow has turned against Iraq.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in his first statement on the Persian Gulf crisis, called on Arab states Friday to “put out the fire” themselves and make outside intervention unnecessary. He denied that the Soviet Union has turned against Iraq.

“From the very beginning,” Gorbachev said, “the Soviet Union has taken a clear and consistent position on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. There is nothing anti-Iraqi in it. On the contrary, we strived to help Iraq find a way out of the situation it found itself in, with minimum losses.

“Unfortunately, this path was not taken,” he added. “The crisis has worsened, prompting the Saudi Arabian leadership to request the U.S. government to deploy U.S. Army and aviation units in Saudi Arabia.”

Gorbachev, vacationing in the Soviet south, addressed his remarks to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, host to an emergency Arab League summit meeting Friday in Cairo. The text of Gorbachev’s remarks was carried by the official Tass news agency.

Although the statement was free of the harsh criticism of Iraq that has been made by other Soviet officials and the state-run news media--one newspaper branded the Kuwait invasion a “crime”--it left no doubt that Gorbachev wants Iraq, a longtime Soviet ally, to pull its soldiers out of Kuwait immediately.

“Numerous examples show that a crisis in interstate relations, unless it is immediately localized and settled, gathers momentum like a stone falling from a rocky cliff,” Gorbachev said. He asked the Arab League to begin “active work” to bring about an end to the conflict.

Last week, in an extraordinary example of superpower cooperation, the United States and the Soviet Union called jointly for a worldwide arms embargo against Iraq. Earlier, the Kremlin shut off the flow of weapons and ammunition that had made it Baghdad’s top arms supplier for more than 20 years.

On Tuesday, the Soviet government issued a statement that the Kremlin is ready to talk about the Persian Gulf crisis with military leaders of the United States, Britain, China and France--members of the U.N. Security Council’s Military Staff Committee. But Gorbachev assured Arab League states presumably jittery about outside military action that the Soviet Union wants them to settle the matter themselves.

“I believe that efforts by Arab countries could play a major role in this common cause,” he said. “Perhaps it is the most preferable path to take.”

At the Arab League summit, the leaders voted to recommend that Arab nations commit military forces to the defense of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and any other Arab land threatened with Iraqi aggression.

Gorbachev said he is ready to “maintain constant contact” with Mubarak and other Arab leaders “to jointly seek a chance to put out the fire in the Persian Gulf, and restore peace and stability there.”

Although officials have ruled out Soviet participation in the U.S.-led force being deployed in Saudi Arabia, the superpowers are staying in touch. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, talked about the gulf crisis by telephone Friday with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, while the latter was in Brussels, Tass reported.

The Kremlin has also drawn up plans for evacuating the 800 Soviet nationals living in Kuwait. Rear Adm. A. Karpin, deputy chief of the navy’s political directorate, told the military daily Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) that the navy is “ready to evacuate its compatriots by sea, if such a task is set before it.”