Israel Won’t Strike at Even ‘Most Extreme’ Arab Nation, Shamir Says : Diplomacy: But his defense minister asserts entire Mideast will be periled unless Iraq’s Hussein is ousted.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared Monday that Israel has no intention of attacking any Arab country. He apparently spoke in response to a charge Sunday by Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz that Israel would strike at Iraq in any Iraqi conflict with the United States.

Shamir said Israel “has no interest in attacking any Arab state, not even the most extreme among them.” His country, he said, “wants to live in peace with all Arab states.”

At the same time, though, Defense Minister Moshe Arens said the entire Middle East will be threatened by Iraq unless President Saddam Hussein is removed.

“If he remains in his post,” Arens said in an Israeli television interview, “and if the weapons in his possession remain in his possession, then there will be room for worry among us, the whole region and the whole world. I hope this will not be the outcome of the crisis.”

Israel has sought repeatedly to assure the United States that it will not try to exploit any conflict that might grow out of the Persian Gulf crisis. Shamir warned, however, that if attacked “we must respond.”

Israeli officials say Washington has privately asked their government to stay out of any fighting in the Middle East on grounds that it would be counterproductive. According to the Israelis, the United States fears that its united front with Arab countries against Iraq would be jeopardized if Israel were to take a hand.

Shamir continues to have a negative view of prospects for a peaceful resolution of the gulf crisis. A senior aide was quoted as saying, “In the prime minister’s assessment of the current situation, the prospects for a diplomatic solution to the crisis are not great.”

Shamir, speaking at a new absorption center, one of the sites designated to deal with Soviet immigrants, predicted that by the end of the decade Israel’s population will have increased by 1 million.

Absorbing those immigrants, almost all of them Soviet Jews, is the most pressing problem facing the country, he said--even greater than any Arab threat to national security.

Israeli schoolteachers, meanwhile, were preparing to give about 1 million children instruction in procedures to be followed in the event of a chemical warfare attack. Schools are scheduled to reopen Sunday.

Education Minister Zevulun Hammer said in a letter to school principals, “We are opening the school year with special preparations in the event of an emergency.” He said the children will be taught to put on gas masks and proceed to upper floors because poison chemicals tend to stay close to the ground.

Bomb shelters at all schools will be inspected before the schools open, Hammer said.

According to school officials, the ministry has decided that giving such instruction to the children will not increase their anxiety about a chemical attack--that, in fact, being straightforward about it will tend to reduce their fears.

Dr. Avigdor Klingman, the Education Ministry’s coordinator for crisis intervention, said, “A child who thinks he can’t wear a mask because it is too scary puts it on with the help of his teacher, paints with it, or does exercise with it, then sees that the devil is not so bad.”