Navy Ready to Use Force to Stop Tankers

The U.S. Navy is shadowing more than half a dozen ships sailing toward or from Iraq and is prepared to use force to halt one or more of them as early as today, Bush Administration officials said Friday.

U.S. warships were close behind two Iraqi oil tankers in the North Arabian Sea on Friday, officials said. The two ships are expected to reach the Yemeni port of Aden tonight or early Sunday.

Administration sources suggested the United States might fire on one of the tankers if it attempts to dock and unload its cargo, in a demonstration of American resolve to use military force to back up the U.N.-sanctioned trade embargo on Iraq.

Officials said the Navy was prepared to forcibly intercept Persian Gulf shipping even in the absence of specific U.N. endorsement of the use of military action to enforce the international sanctions against Iraq. The U.N. Security Council early today passed a resolution approving such action on a 13 to 0 vote with two abstentions.

Navy ships fired warning shots at two Iraqi tankers last weekend, and U.S. officials have been saying throughout the week that the Administration plans to enforce the blockade, unilaterally and by force if necessary.

The White House on Friday appeared to be signaling its intention to move from threats to action this weekend.

The Administration hopes that other nations will join in any military move against Iraqi shipping. But so far only France and Australia have naval vessels in position in the Arabian Sea to join a U.S. action, Pentagon officials said.

Washington has been closely consulting with Paris about a joint effort to stop Iraqi maritime traffic, and French officials have agreed to participate in military enforcement efforts, U.S. officials said.

Naval authorities said that a decision to halt a merchant ship by force would be carried out by shooting up its bridge with cannons, destroying its communications and control systems. A warning would be delivered by radio instructing the crew to go below deck before the firing began, officials said.

A loaded oil tanker sits low in the water, making it difficult or impossible to cripple by hitting the rudder, experts said. Firing into the hull risks fire, explosion or a major oil spill, they added.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Iraq was continuing to receive critical military supplies, including possible chemical warfare agents, from outside the country despite the embargo.

Fitzwater would not specify the nature of the goods, the source nations or the exact means used to circumvent the sanctions, although he said some air shipments continued to enter the country. He indicated that the Soviet Union was not one of the source countries.

The White House spokesman, hoping to spur the U.N. Security Council to authorize the use of force to enforce the blockade, revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Baghdad is receiving shipments “of one kind or another, military materiel that appears to be coming in through some routes in addition to the procurement of chemical warfare products which we have great concern about.”

Informed Administration sources, however, questioned Fitzwater’s assertion about chemical weapons, saying that U.S. agencies had detected movement of chemical agents in Libya that might have been destined for Iraq, but that the weapons had never left Libya.

And Pentagon officials cautioned that imposing an air blockade on Iraq was virtually impossible.

“There will be no air ‘blockade.’ We aren’t going to be shooting stuff out of the skies,” a senior Pentagon official said. “Planes are a lot more difficult to interdict than ships,” the official said, noting that an aircraft cannot be disabled in flight without knocking it down.

Instead of air interdiction, the official said, “we are working with other countries in the region, asking them to close their air corridors” to traffic into and out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that the battleship Wisconsin had entered the Persian Gulf, adding a new dimension in firepower to the conflict. The Wisconsin, with its 16-inch guns and its 32 Tomahawk cruise missile launchers, can bombard a beach in support of an amphibious landing or hit targets as far away as 450 miles with its terrain-hugging missiles.

The huge, World War II-vintage warship is part of the U.S. arsenal in the region that U.S. military officials have said could prove quickly decisive in any conflict with Iraq.

Times staff writer David Lauter, in Kennebunkport, Me., contributed to this report.