U.S. Sending Supplies From Emirates Air Base : Buildup: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney praises the latest gulf country to open its doors to outside forces.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Monday announced that U.S. Air Force planes have begun operating out of a base in the United Arab Emirates, and he praised the “strong commitment” of the Emirates, the latest Persian Gulf country to open its doors to outside forces in the military confrontation with Iraq.

The touring Pentagon leader said that C-130 cargo planes are using Bateen Air Base to ferry supplies to American troops in Saudi Arabia.

The Emirates, a confederation of seven small oil sheikdoms, announced Sunday that it had agreed to host “some Arab and friendly forces” in the face of the threat to its big neighbor and alliance partner, Saudi Arabia.

“That reveals the strong commitment of the men and women of this country to defend their way of life and to rally behind their leadership at this time,” Cheney said.

The C-130s had, in fact, begun operations from Bateen five days ago, American military officers told reporters traveling with Cheney. “But I don’t think anybody knows how long they’ll be here,” said Col. Dave Mason, commander of the 314th Tactical Airlift Squadron, who has 16 C-130s and 575 airmen in a unit flown to the Emirates from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas.

Cheney told reporters aboard his plane on a four-day tour of the crisis region that the American commitment is “long-term” and that he could not speculate on what the size of the force will be “one or two years from now.”

The impression that U.S. military units will be in the Persian Gulf on an open-ended deployment to safeguard oil production vital to the industrialized world has been supported by gulf officials in private conversations over the last few weeks.

The Saudis requested Western support in the face of an Iraqi threat to their oil fields after Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s Aug. 2 invasion of Saudi Arabia’s neighbor Kuwait. Following the Saudis’ lead, the normally cautious Arab states on the west coast of the gulf, one by one, joined the defense. British airplanes flew to Oman in the first days of the crisis. Last week, Bahrain approved open use of its airfields by British jets.

All the small countries, bound in alliance to Saudi Arabia under the Gulf Cooperation Council, supported the deployment of the first foreign forces on Saudi soil.

Officials in Bahrain and other gulf states say their governments are now prepared for a long-term strategy to repel any aggression.

“We have to be very realistic,” one said, discarding the notion that the gulf states can provide their own security. “The whole world agrees that there is a danger to the international economic system” if the Persian Gulf is unstable.

“The principle will be here for a long time. The Americans will be here, and the British will supplement them,” the official added.

In this crisis, the Emirates were the first to act. When the Iraqi army first threatened Kuwait in late July, in an oil-production dispute that also involved the Emirates, President Bush sent two KC-135 refueling tankers to the gulf for exercises with the Emirates’ minuscule air force of French-made Mirage fighters.

Now, the 314th Squadron has set up shop in the desert heat. The airmen are housed in 50 air-conditioned trailers provided by the Emirates’ central government in Abu Dhabi. Col. Mason, the commander, said his planes were ferrying food, ammunition and weapons from Bateen Air Base to the growing force of American Marines and paratroopers on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

“The total size of the final deployment will depend on future developments,” said Cheney, who left the Emirates for stops Monday in Oman, a sultanate just outside the Persian Gulf, and the Saudi city of Jidda, on the Red Sea coast. “I’m especially pleased that U.S. forces are among those accepted by the UAE in defense of the gulf,” he declared after meeting with the Emirates’ president, Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayan.

“It’s a measure of the seriousness of the situation and shows how deeply concerned they are about Saddam Hussein. They want to cooperate with the United States and other forces in the region.”

He made no disclosure of U.S. deployments beyond the airlift squadron. The Emirates’ acceptance of foreign forces specifically mentioned the possibility of Arab units joining a multinational defense.

The Emirates government, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “has agreed to receiving some Arab and friendly forces as a contribution towards Arab and international efforts to defend the region.”

Two days earlier, Bahraini officials had announced their approval of use of airfields on the small island nation by British forces.

On Aug. 7, less than a week after Iraqi tanks and troops poured across the Kuwaiti frontier and occupied the oil sheikdom, President Bush ordered U.S. troops and warplanes onto Saudi Arabian soil at the request of King Fahd, whose country was threatened by Iraqi armor driving south from Kuwait city.

The first American planes began arriving in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province the next day, marking the first foreign deployment in the gulf states. Britain sent in a squadron of Tornado fighters and flew a squadron of Jaguar warplanes to Oman.

American naval forces had been operating in the international waters of the gulf for years, demonstrating the right of free passage. In the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq, American warplanes flew cover over Navy ships escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers reflagged under the Stars and Stripes to qualify them for American protection.

The strategy kept Kuwaiti oil moving to world markets but was marked by tragedy in 1987 when an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the frigate Stark, killing 37 U.S. sailors. Baghdad said the attack was an accident.

The next year, a missile fired by the guided missile cruiser Vincennes felled an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 aboard. Vincennes’ officers said the plane was mistaken for an attacking warplane.

Since the Iran-Iraq truce that ended the war in 1988, Washington has kept a presence in the gulf in the form of an eight-ship task force.

Arab countries, including those in the gulf, have traditionally insisted that Arab disputes should be left to them. But the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has changed the tune along the oil-rich waterway.

“The political existence of the Middle East as we know it is now in jeopardy,” said a key official in one gulf state. “Others dream of Arab unity. But it is not even a dream. It’s a fiction. It’s completely destroyed.”