Soviets Warn of a Backfire Over Buildup : Strategy: Kremlin cautiously endorses U.S. military moves but says the massive presence could cause Arabs to coalesce.

The Soviet Union on Monday cautiously endorsed the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf but warned Washington that its massive presence is becoming a new issue around which hard-line Arabs would coalesce and that is obscuring the original issue, Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait.

Expressing both understanding for U.S. motives but also fears for the region if Washington uses military force, Gennady I. Gerasimov, the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s chief spokesman, sketched the probable approach that President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will take on the gulf crisis in his talks in Helsinki, Finland, on Sunday with President Bush.

While reiterating the Kremlin’s call for a political settlement of the crisis based on Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait and other terms set out by the U.N. Security Council last month, Gerasimov stressed the danger that Moscow sees of a major conflict in the region.

“The Americans say that they do not want to have a war,” Gerasimov told a news briefing. “But the situation is complicated, and some people feel that Israel is going to prod the United States to close this chapter with (Iraq’s President) Saddam Hussein. . . .

“The United States understands that its presence and, in particular, the reinforcement of that presence will to some extent help Saddam Hussein consolidate the anti-American bloc. Now everyone begins to forget the original cause of the developments--that Kuwait was seized and international law was violated.”

But Gerasimov, dismissing as “personal opinion” and “conjectural” recent criticism from other Soviet officials of the U.S. buildup, stressed Moscow’s basic sympathy with most of the Bush Administration’s actions in the crisis.

“The Americans appeared there (in the gulf) not on their own initiative, but they were provoked into it by Iraqi actions,” he said, adding that the United States had come to the defense of Saudi Arabia at the kingdom’s request. “Their objective is to protect that country against possible aggression.”

Only last week, however, Gen. Vladimir N. Lobov, the commander of Warsaw Pact forces, had outlined a menacing scenario in which U.S. forces continued to increase in the gulf region and across Southwest Asia, strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization encirclement of the Soviet Union. Washington’s moves have already imperiled a treaty reducing conventional armed forces in Europe, Lobov said.

“I did not say that, and I cannot see the connection,” Gerasimov commented. “I see no direct link.”

A deputy foreign minister expressed concerns similar to Lobov’s to a legislative committee last week, reflecting the widely different Soviet views on the crisis. A commentator in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said Sunday that chances of war are “50-50” and that a “military solution” would have grave consequences for superpower relations.

But the government newspaper Izvestia, looking ahead to the Bush-Gorbachev summit, on Monday backed the American President’s swift reaction to Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait.

“Bush had no other choice under the conditions offered by Hussein, and his resolute action prevented two worse possibilities, an attack on Saudi Arabia and a possible Iraqi success,” senior commentator Stanislav Kondrashev wrote. “Besides, the speedy military buildup of U.S. forces and their allies created military pressure on the aggressor without which the effectiveness of economic and political pressure would be greatly diminished.”

Gerasimov, speaking for the top Soviet leadership in advance of the summit, stressed that Gorbachev sees the one-day meeting with Bush in Helsinki as a significant break with the Cold War tactics in which the two superpowers played each international crisis for their own advantage.

“The concept of prompting arranged, trustful contacts at the summit level fits in perfectly with the new fiber of Soviet-American dialogue, based on the renunciation of Cold War stereotypes and the transition to interaction on a wide range of problems,” Gerasimov said. “Such personal meetings, both presidents believe, offer a unique possibility to compare notes on the fast-changing situation, grasp each other’s initial reasoning better and, consequently, help enhance constructive trends and resist adverse tendencies in world development.”

Although the Soviet Union is not attempting to mediate in the gulf conflict, Gerasimov suggested that Gorbachev would have some ideas to put to Bush on ways that the crisis might be eased and a way opened to a political solution.

“Maybe it would be possible to come up with some formula to reduce the number of forces there under international guarantees,” Gerasimov suggested, again stressing the Soviet preference for political means, such as a phased de-escalation and military pullbacks, to ensure the implementation of the U.N. resolutions.

Soviet officials anticipate that Bush will press Gorbachev to pull out the 193 military advisers the Soviet Union still has in Iraq training its troops to use and maintain weapons Moscow has sold the Iraqis. The Izvestia commentary said the Soviet Union feared that Iraq would halt payments on $6 billion in debts if the advisers, supplied under long-term contracts, are withdrawn.