Arab Leaders Agree to Send Troops to Help Defend Saudi Arabia : Gulf crisis: Iraq’s Hussein calls for a ‘holy war’ against the West. Secretary of State Baker warns NATO allies of ‘a new dark age’ if aggression against Kuwait goes unpunished.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, in a fiery call to arms, summoned the Arab masses Friday to wage “holy war” on America and topple the “emirs of oil.” Arab rulers struck back, after days of indecision, with a plan to send their own troops to the side of the Americans in the Arabian desert.

The new Arab force might include soldiers from Egypt and Syria, two Middle East military powers.

Arab sheiks and presidents, meeting in Cairo, also decided to honor the worldwide U.N. trade embargo on Iraq. But eight of 20 Arab League states present did not support the anti-Iraq moves.

That dimmed the prospects for a solid economic boycott and raised the likelihood that the U.S. Navy, whose ships were gathering in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, would mount a seaborne blockade of Iraq’s outlets to the world.

On the ninth day of the crisis, as Hussein’s warlike message flashed from Baghdad through the Mideast, U.S. troops and planes continued to stream into Saudi Arabia to build up their “desert shield” against the giant Iraqi army, which invaded and occupied neighboring Kuwait on Aug. 2

Speaking of those GIs, Hussein urged Arabs to “burn the soil under their feet.”

Earlier Friday, thousands demonstrated in Jordanian cities against America, “the Satan,” and chanted “Down with Fahd!”--the Saudi monarch who last week invited the U.S. ground forces into his wealthy desert kingdom.

Arab sentiment seemed torn between fear of an Arab usurper, the aggressive Hussein, and resentment of an outside interventionist power, the United States.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, at NATO headquarters in Belgium on Friday, sought new backing from U.S. allies for the Mideast military operation. They offered a few more ships to support a growing U.S. Navy armada expected soon to throw a strict cordon around Iraq.

Baker also reiterated serious U.S. concerns about the more than 3,500 Americans trapped in Kuwait and Iraq because the Hussein government is forbidding foreigners to enter or leave. The State Department said the United States and several Western allies have made joint appeals to the Iraqi government to let citizens of their respective countries depart.

Baker told reporters in Brussels on Friday that the United States was “very disturbed” about the status of the stranded Americans. But, he said, “We are not calling them hostages . . . nothing has been asked or demanded for their freedom.”

However, the stranded U.S. citizens were looking more and more like insurance for Hussein, a trump card in his high-stakes showdown with the United States.

“They may not be called hostages, but in reality they are. . . . It’s his ace in the hole,” said the Rev. Edwin Davis of Koran, La., whose daughter and two grandchildren are trapped.

The Iraqis say their blitzkrieg into Kuwait was aimed at redressing grievances old and new. The Kuwaitis’ recent overproduction of oil had deflated world prices and Iraq’s oil revenues, they complained, and Kuwait was draining Iraqi strength by demanding repayment of $15 billion in loans.

They also reasserted old territorial claims over Kuwait, and six days after the invasion they “annexed” the small oil state.

Iraq’s moves drew worldwide condemnation. The U.N. Security Council ordered a global economic embargo. President Bush said the Iraqi army posed a threat to Saudi Arabia--and therefore to the U.S. oil supply and economy--and ordered American troops to reinforce the outmanned Saudi military.

The President, who flew off Friday for a 25-day vacation in Maine, first sent a report to Congress declaring, “I do not believe . . . involvement in hostilities is imminent” in Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, protested to American reporters in Cairo that “we do not threaten anybody.”

Hussein’s statement, read by a spokesman on Iraqi radio and Kuwaiti television, struck one belligerent note after another.

After first asserting that the United States plans aggression against Iraq, the President threatened various targets in language resonant with the religious enmities of the medieval Crusades.

“Oh, Arabs! Oh, Muslims! Oh, believers in God wherever you are! This is your day to rise and spread quickly in order to defend Mecca, which is captive to the spears of the Americans and the Zionists,” Hussein proclaimed.

He called on Arabs to drive the Americans from the land of Mecca and other Islamic holy places, to keep U.S. warships from passing through the Suez Canal and into the Persian Gulf, and to overthrow the family autocracies that govern the oil states and have “kept away the riches from the majority.”

“Your brothers in Iraq are determined on jihad (holy war),” he declared.

The appeal of Hussein’s message, easily heard in Jordan, Syria and the gulf states, could not be immediately judged.

The State Department on Friday, in a reflection of concern over Arab hostility, warned diplomatic stations to be on guard against terrorist attacks.

In the United States, Bush dismissed Hussein’s statements as “a rather frantic ploy” by a leader “backed into a corner.”

The outcome of the Arab League summit in Cairo was a victory for Bush and Fahd, who had sought to give the military shield in Saudi Arabia a multinational character.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appealed to both Arab pride and Arab fear in rallying support for an all-Arab force in Saudi Arabia.

“The choice in front of us is clear: an Arab act that will preserve higher Arab interests and both Iraq and Kuwait, or a foreign intervention in which we will have no say or control,” Mubarak said.

The summit discussions were heated. At one point, Iraqi and Kuwaiti delegates reportedly shouted at one another, and the foreign minister of the deposed Kuwaiti government collapsed and was rushed to a hospital.

Later, in closed session, 12 of the Arab states, including Egypt, Syria and the smaller oil emirates, approved a seven-point plan that includes stationing a military force in Saudi Arabia. The eight other members, including Iraq’s neighbor Jordan, either voted against, abstained or were absent.

Egyptian officials said the plan would be binding only on the 12 governments that voted for it.

The Arab military deployment, whose details remained to be worked out, would confront Hussein with a rival coalition of both monarchies and Arab republics, weakening his claim to pan-Arab leadership.

In Iraq, which imports $2 billion worth of food a year, people fearing shortages as a result of the international economic embargo rushed to stock up on rice, sugar, cooking oil and other foodstuffs.

Baker told NATO ministers that the situation in the Persian Gulf was “full of peril,” and called on the 15 U.S. allies in the Western alliance “to examine how you might help” enforce the boycott of Iraq approved by the U.N. Security Council.

“It is not only economic progress that is threatened,” he told them. “If might is to make right, then the world will be plunged into a new dark age.”

In Saudi Arabia, more U.S. fighter planes arrived to bolster the buildup of U.S. combat troops. A Pentagon source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the United States was prepared to put “many divisions” in Saudi Arabia.

“We have contingency plans that could result in the insertion of up to 200,000 to 250,000 ground forces before it’s all done,” said the source, who spoke on condition that further identification be withheld.