U.S. Considers Air Blockade to Stiffen Embargo

The United States is considering escalating the trade embargo against Iraq into an aerial blockade and will seek Soviet endorsement of the plan along with other military assistance in the Persian Gulf at today’s summit in Helsinki, Finland, diplomatic sources said Saturday.

Soviet leaders have already agreed “in principle” to transport a Syrian armored division to Saudi Arabia and may also agree to ship American military materiel, including spare parts and medical supplies, to help support the multinational defense force in the Saudi desert, the sources said.

It is considered unlikely that Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would agree to commit Soviet troops to the multinational force, but leaders of the defense effort in the Persian Gulf consider even a token Kremlin commitment, such as an agreement to transport troops and war materiel, to be crucial to maintaining international backing for the military intervention.

“The Soviet Union will end up shipping Syrian troops, and may even ship American war materiel for the U.S. to Saudi Arabia,” said one source who, with the others who discussed the Soviet talks, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“They don’t send troops, fine. But the point is, if they help ship troops, if they help send American materiel, you implicate them. . . . They’re part of the operation,” the source said.

The diplomatic sources said President Bush will also consult Gorbachev about the possibility of stepping up the naval blockade of Iraqi imports and exports into an aerial blockade, halting air shipments of supplies bound for Baghdad from Iraq’s allies in the region.

“To go from here to an air blockade is only one step more,” one diplomat said.

U.S. officials have said there is evidence that Libya has been flying supplies into Iraq in violation of the international sanctions, and some Arab sources said they believe that Yemen and possibly North Korea may also attempt to airlift supplies to Iraq.

Many officials believe the U.N. resolution authorizing the naval blockade does not restrict the measure to the halting of ships bound for Iraq or departing from there, but the matter of stopping flights into and out of Iraq presents unique problems and requires additional international support, several diplomatic sources said.

“Planes are a little bit harder to force down than ships. You can board a ship, or you can fire over the bow, but it’s kind of hard to board an airplane in flight,” one official said. “It’s either all or nothing. You have to assume that if you fire at an airplane, it’s going down.”

To enforce such a blockade, countries over which supply flights would pass would have to sign agreements forbidding the overflights. Any flights violating the overflight regulations could be confronted in the air by military escort jets or, in the worst case, if a plane refused to land, “you would have good international grounds to force it down,” one official said.

Another way of enforcing the blockade would be to require any flights bound for Iraq to present themselves for inspection before takeoff, one source said.

In any case, most officials do not believe that airlifts into Iraq can furnish that nation with enough provisions to outweigh the impact of an effective naval blockade.

“Realistically speaking, you can’t support 17 million people with an airlift,” said one source. “It’s way beyond the logistic capability of Iraq or even those countries that are aiding him (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein). Remember, the countries that are aiding Iraq are all desperately poor themselves.”

If things go well at the summit, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal is expected to travel to Moscow soon after the summit to announce the resumption of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union after a break of more than 50 years.

Diplomatic sources said that talks about renewing relations began in earnest a little less than two weeks ago, when Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, traveled to Moscow to discuss growing Soviet concerns about the American military buildup in the region.

The Saudis believe that with the Soviets now out of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and what was formerly South Yemen, “now is the time to establish relations, and Gorbachev is a man we can work with,” one government source said.

Soviet assistance in helping transport an additional Syrian armored brigade to Saudi Arabia is key to helping supplement Arab and Islamic forces in the region, which officials this week said could soon nearly equal the number of U.S. forces now on the ground.

Egypt has indicated it may commit an additional 30,000 troops to the 2,000 commandos it has already stationed near Saudi Arabia’s border with Kuwait, and Pakistan may dispatch an additional 5,000 troops to supplement the 5,000-troop force already committed, diplomatic sources said.

In all, they said, the Arab and Islamic forces could total 75,000 to 80,000, in addition to an American force that is expected to reach 150,000.

However, none of the forces would be prepared to launch an offensive action until mid-October, a time at which officials will determine how well the economic sanctions against Iraq have worked, several sources said.

“The troops sent into Saudi Arabia by the last half of October will be in a position to launch a military attack,” one official said. “The next step at that time would be to get the right to intervene militarily, to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait.”