Baghdad Renews Its Verbal Attack on U.S. Military Buildup in Mideast : Deployment: ‘Bush had better withdraw,’ Iraqi says. Syria is sending a brigade to Saudi Arabia.

On the heels of its first tenuous diplomatic success in the Persian Gulf crisis, Iraq on Thursday followed the call of its old enemy, Iran, and renewed its attack on the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, responding to President Bush’s address to Congress on Tuesday night, insisted that Iraq has no intention to invade Saudi Arabia or any other gulf state.

“We challenge the U.S. President to present tangible proof of his allegations,” Aziz said in remarks published Thursday. “Bush had better withdraw his forces and reduce American expenditure on war.”

The silver-haired foreign minister was fresh from a trip to Tehran, a visit that resulted in the renewal of diplomatic relations between the two countries. On Wednesday, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian spiritual leader, harshly attacked the American troop buildup in the gulf and called for a holy war on the United States.

And Iraq warned Thursday of possible terrorist attacks against U.S. forces, sounding the theme of Arab feelings wounded by the presence of non-Muslim soldiers massed in the holy lands of Saudi Arabia, wire services reported.

Iraq’s warning came in a memorandum to the U.S. charge d’affaires in Baghdad, according to the Iraqi News Agency. The service said Iraq was responding to a U.S. claim that Iraq-based terrorists were preparing to attack U.S. targets.

The United States is creating a “pretext” for aggression, the memorandum was quoted as saying, and “Iraq reserves its legitimate right to self-defense, to reciprocate and to retaliate firmly against these parties if it becomes a target,” the news agency added.

Meanwhile, Syria was reported to be sending an armored brigade, involving up to 10,000 troops and 300 tanks, to Saudi Arabia in a signal of its new role in the Middle East. Western diplomats told Reuters news service that the Saudi government had asked Damascus to send the division to supplement the 3,000 Syrian troops already there. About 1,000 Syrian troops are in the United Arab Emirates.

According to the Western diplomats, the number of Syrian troops expected to be deployed in the crisis may reach 14,000.

Since the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, Baghdad has worked hard to win support from Iran, with which it engaged in a bloody, eight-year war that ended in 1988. Iran, with its long land border, could make or break a trade embargo imposed on Iraq by the United Nations.

Last month, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a lightning diplomatic move, pulled his troops out of land that Iraq had occupied during the war and gave in on all the border issues that were at stake in the conflict. The countries agreed to exchange prisoners of war and, following Aziz’s visit, to take steps to normalize diplomatic and trade relations.

On Thursday, the Tehran Times newspaper, which often reflects the views of the Iranian government, denied that Iran would exchange food and cash for Iraqi oil. It quoted an “informed source” in Tehran as saying the government had not yet decided whether to allow shipments into Iraq.

But Iran’s enmity toward the United States, dating from the 1979 Shiite Muslim revolution, could tempt Tehran to play a spoiler’s role in the gulf crisis: The mullahs who rule Iran might undermine the sanctions enough to keep Iraq afloat--and force the United States to choose between remaining bogged down in Saudi Arabia or opening fire on Iraq.

“Iran can sit back and watch its enemies struggle over this one,” said one Western European diplomat, noting that it was a reverse of the situation during the Iran-Iraq war, when much of the world stood by and watched the warring neighbors fight it out.

Iraq’s counteroffensive against the U.N. trade sanctions continues to center on the needs of tens of thousands of Asian refugees stranded in both Iraq and Kuwait. The refugees are forbidden to buy food in Iraq, and supplies are reportedly running short in Kuwait. Baghdad is demanding that Asian governments, particularly India and the Philippines, send food to their citizens.

Western governments want any food deliveries to the Asians handled by the International Red Cross or some other foreign relief agency. One U.S. diplomat has accused Iraq of “cynical manipulation” of the refugees’ suffering.

Iraq counters that the shortages are the fault of the blockade and that shipments should enter the country like regular imports.

On Thursday, the Red Cross and its Islamic counterpart, the Red Crescent, reached an agreement to supply medicines to civilians.

Meanwhile, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin L. Powell, visited with U.S. forces and said the American troops “are deterring (Iraq) now, and with each passing day, our defensive capability gets better and better.”

At a news conference, Powell responded to repeated questions about the U.S. deployment’s ultimate size and purpose by saying the U.S. military has not been assigned an offensive mission.

“The only mission I have been assigned is to deter and defend,” he declared. “The force is being structured for that purpose.”

“Don’t sell them short. They are good for the long haul,” Powell said.

Staff writer Melissa Healy, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.