Bush to Forgive Egypt Arms Debt : Military: Canceling the $7.1 billion would reward Cairo for supporting the embargo, buildup against Iraq.

President Bush has agreed to forgive Egypt’s $7.1-billion military debt to the United States as a reward for Cairo’s support for the U.N. economic embargo against Iraq and the huge U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said Friday.

The decision, which Bush made at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me., is expected to be the first of several such gestures that Washington is considering for Middle East countries that have supported the U.S. effort.

Egypt receives about $2.3 billion in U.S. aid each year, of which approximately $1.3 billion is in military assistance.

At the same time, U.S. officials said Bush has decided to warn Jordan, gently but firmly, that it may jeopardize some of the aid it receives from the United States and other Western industrialized countries unless it takes a firmer stand against Iraq.

Washington wants Jordan’s King Hussein to cut off the traffic still going to Iraq through his own country and to halt food shipments to Baghdad from Jordan.

Bush plans to send the message to King Hussein through a high-level delegation, probably headed by Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates, which will visit Amman, Jordan.

Although the king has said he would honor the U.N.-imposed embargo, he has been highly critical of the U.S. troop deployment in the region, and trucks carrying supplies have continued to cross the nation’s border into Iraq.

Jordan, one of the poorest nations in the Middle East, has suffered severe economic losses from restricted trade with Iraq since the U.N. sanctions were approved early last month. The nation also has had to shoulder the burden of tens of thousands of refugees who have fled there from occupied Kuwait.

Administration officials said the debt forgiveness for Egypt was specifically requested by President Hosni Mubarak, who talked with Bush by phone Thursday night.

Meanwhile, Bush phoned a series of foreign leaders Friday, including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, French President Francois Mitterrand and Saudi Arabian King Fahd, as he sought to shore up support for his plan to share the mounting costs of the U.S. deployment in the Persian Gulf.

In public, Administration officials continued to praise the efforts made to date by other governments, such as Japan, to help support the American-led efforts to roll back Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait. U.S. officials are eager to avoid public disputes that could shatter the international consensus so carefully nurtured over the past month.

But privately, U.S. officials made it plain that they intend to ask for more help from abroad than has been offered so far. The Administration’s appeals are aimed at Japan, West Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the exiled government of Kuwait.

On Friday, shortly after a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry ruled out any increase in the $1 billion Japan has already promised for the multinational forces in the Mideast, a State Department official bluntly predicted that the Japanese spokesman will be proven wrong. “All I can say is, we still need more (aid from Japan),” this official said.

Next week, both Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady will be traveling overseas to talk with foreign officials about the mounting expenses of the Persian Gulf operations. Baker will make several stops in Europe and the Mideast, while Brady will visit Japan and South Korea.

Over the past two days, Bush, according to aides, has spoken with eight foreign heads of state to try to coordinate financial aid plans and the international effort to impose economic sanctions on Iraq.

White House and State Department officials leave no doubt that the Administration is happier with some countries’ response than with others. Administration officials were particularly effusive in their praise for Mitterrand, telling reporters about the “positive tone” in relations between France and the United States.

The French have sent the second-most-powerful naval contingent to Middle Eastern waters after the American flotilla. And despite early suggestions that the French thought Bush was moving too quickly toward a military confrontation with Iraq, officials now say France is “strongly on board” in support of the international anti-Iraq effort.

By contrast, officials here offered few comments about West Germany’s efforts. Before the current crisis began, U.S. officials were making much of the new strategic cooperation between Washington and Bonn.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler confirmed that the United States is keeping a war crimes file on violations of international law by Hussein, as was reported Friday by The Times.

“We are of course very concerned about Iraq’s violations of international law, including the taking of hostages and the use of civilians as a shield against military operations,” Tutwiler said at a news briefing.

Separately, the American who died this week in Iraq was identified by his family as banker James L. Worthington Jr.

Worthington, 53, a native of Marathon, Tex., died Monday, his daughter told the Daily Freeman of Kingston, N.Y. “He was taken hostage in Kuwait and moved to Basra where he died of a heart attack,” said Maggie Jean Neilson, 27, of Woodstock, N.Y.

Worthington had been working as a consultant for the Alahi Bank of Kuwait.