U.S. Ships Fire Warning Shots but Let Iraqi Tankers Sail On : Mideast crisis: Vessels ignore repeated requests by frigates to halt in Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf confrontations.

American frigates fired warnings across the bows of two Iraqi oil tankers Saturday--the first shots in a rapidly escalating war of nerves between the United States and the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The shots were fired by the frigates Reid in the Gulf of Oman and Bradley in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi tankers refused repeated requests to halt, according to U.S. officials. The tankers did not stop after the warnings and were permitted to continue on their way “under close U.S. Navy surveillance,” officials said.

Capt. Morris C. Foote, skipper of the Ticonderoga guided-missile cruiser, said U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf moved to their highest state of readiness after the Reid fired a 76-millimeter gun at a tanker identified as the Khanaqin. The Ticonderoga is stationed in the Red Sea as part of the Eisenhower carrier battle group.

The incidents heightened the already keen sense of tension reflected in statements issued by both sides. Even before the shooting incidents, Hussein’s government condemned the two-day-old U.S. effort to interdict seaborne commerce bound for Iraq or occupied Kuwait as “an act of war.”

Sailors and officers interviewed aboard the Eisenhower expressed fears that U.S. and Iraqi forces are on a collision course toward an all-out shooting war. Many were particularly concerned about Iraq’s threat to use chemical weapons against U.S. forces if the current standoff erupts into combat.

Abdul Amir Anbari, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that his government considered the U.S. interception effort to be a violation of the U.N. Charter.

“You know the situation is far from normal, and we are almost on the verge of war, unfortunately,” he said. “We hope to avoid it. In that situation, you have to be very cautious, and you have to calculate everything without jeopardizing the integrity and the sovereignty and the safety of your people.”

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, arriving for a three-day tour of the region, described the deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East in response to Iraq’s armed annexation of Kuwait as “long term” and said it could last for years.

Cheney, informed of the shooting incidents by Navy commanders shortly after he arrived in the region, was told that the Reid fired six shots over the Khanaqin, according to Pentagon officials. The Bradley fired only three shots.

White House officials refused to comment about the clash between the U.S. frigates and Iraqi tankers. One official, declining to be identified, said simply: “We said we’d intercept ships, and we intercepted ships.”

Meanwhile, the destroyer Scott was involved in a less dramatic incident with a Cypriot tanker traveling north in the Red Sea toward Jordan’s port of Aqaba. Tom Corcoran, skipper of the Scott, said the tanker was ordered to return to its home port in Sudan or to “any other neutral port that was not Iraq or Aqaba.”

For an hour, Corcoran said, he conducted “a very polite conversation” with the skipper of the Cypriot ship. He said he ordered the ship to change course after the commercial ship’s captain disclosed that he was carrying a shipment of aluminum chromate.

This encounter came just two days after King Hussein of Jordan assured Bush that he would not allow Aqaba to be used to smuggle goods to Iraq in violation of the U.N.-approved economic sanctions against the Middle East aggressor.

Cheney warned that “there may be more” incidents in which Navy ships will turn commercial vessels away from the port of Aqaba. But he added that “as word gets out that the operation is under way and successful, there’s probably a lot of traffic that would have come to Aqaba that had been destined for Iraq and now simply won’t come.”

Speaking to weary crew members, Cheney also expressed hope that they could return to port as soon as possible. “But the situation is a very delicate one,” he noted. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

In Kennebunkport, Me., where President Bush is vacationing, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater accused Iraq of trying to use innocent Americans detained in Baghdad and Kuwait as “pawns” in the standoff between U.S. and Iraqi troops positioned along the Saudi Arabian border. Hussein’s efforts violate international law, Fitzwater said.

Bush was aboard his twin-V-8 cigarette-type boat, Fidelity, on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine when an Iraqi statement that Americans and other foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait would suffer from food shortages along with Iraqis was read on a live television broadcast. Details of the broadcast were relayed to him via cellular telephone by Robert M. Gates, his deputy national security adviser, who was ashore at the time.

Fitzwater said Bush was “deeply concerned” about the Iraqi statement, but the President kept mostly out of sight and refused to comment on the developments in the continuing Persian Gulf crisis.

“The use of innocent civilians as pawns to promote what Iraq sees to be its self-interest is contrary to international law and indeed to all accepted norms of international conduct,” Fitzwater said. “We urge that Iraq immediately reconsider its refusal to allow any foreign national desiring to leave to do so without delay or condition.”

Late Saturday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution demanding the safe release of foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait.

The Security Council met after holding informal consultations at the request of the United States to respond to Iraqi moves against foreigners.

The Security Council called for Iraq to “permit and facilitate the immediate departure” of third-country nationals from both Kuwait and Iraq and demanded that Iraq grant diplomatic officials “immediate and continuing access to all such persons.” It also warned Iraq to “take no action to jeopardize the safety or health” of foreign nationals.

The Iraqi statement issued Saturday went to the heart of the international campaign against Baghdad: the attempt to put increasing pressure on Hussein by cutting off his nation’s access to foreign goods, including food.

Iraq imports 70% to 75% of its food, and in its statement, it sought to shift the focus to the potential suffering of Americans and other foreign nationals if the embargo holds.

Meanwhile, there was no public announcement of a decision by Bush on a Pentagon proposal to call up as many as 150,000 military reservists to supplement the growing U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Administration officials have said it is virtually certain that at least a limited call-up will be approved.

A White House official said the papers Bush would have to sign to implement the reserve mobilization had not yet reached Kennebunkport from the Pentagon.

Bush has been spending the weeks leading up to Labor Day at his family vacation home in Maine, but he will return to Washington today to have dinner with his national security team.

On Monday, he plans to meet with budget advisers, address the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Baltimore, and speak to a Republican fund-raising luncheon in Rhode Island before returning to Maine at midafternoon.

The President was said by the White House to have spent Saturday afternoon visiting with house guests, including family members assembling for the funeral Tuesday of one of the President’s uncles, John Walker, who died Thursday.

Melissa Healy reported from the Red Sea and James Gerstenzang from Kennebunkport. Times staff writers Sara Fritz and Sam Fulwood II, in Washington, and David Treadwell in New York contributed to this report.

Other STORIES: A8-A22, B1.