New Steps Taken to Ostracize Iraq : Gulf crisis: Baghdad is barred from the Asian Games. The United Nations works to finalize an air embargo. Saddam Hussein videotapes a message to Americans.

International efforts to further isolate Iraq moved forward Thursday when the Olympic Council of Asia voted to expel the Iraqi national team from the Asian Games, and the United Nations struggled with the final wording on a resolution to impose an air embargo on Baghdad.

In the Iraqi capital, President Saddam Hussein videotaped a message to be televised for the American public, apparently designed as a rebuttal to President Bush’s speech to the Iraqi people that was shown earlier this week.

Iraq’s official news agency did not disclose the content of Hussein’s speech, but Information Minister Latif Jasim said the tape has been given to “concerned American personalities” for broadcast in the United States.

The Olympic Council vote in Beijing, conducted by secret ballot, was 27 to 3 in favor of barring Iraq from the games and suspending it from the council. There were five abstentions, one invalid ballot and two members absent.

In addition to political concerns, the vote was influenced by personal factors because the previous head of the council, Sheik Fahd al Ahmed al Sabah, was killed in the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Thursday’s meeting began with all delegates, including the Iraqis, standing for a moment of silence in memory of the sheik.

After the vote, his son, Ahmed al Fahd al Sabah, said that Kuwaiti athletes “feel now that the whole world and Asia are with them.”

Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council labored to produce a draft resolution on an air blockade amid political pressures and quibbles over details.

A new snag arose Thursday when, according to one diplomat, the United States asked for a change in the agreement hammered out thus far among five permanent members of the Security Council. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, declined to specify the requested change.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, striding out of the council chamber, deflected all questions about the air embargo.

“None of them is right,” he told a reporter who asked which is the correct version of numerous drafts which have surfaced during the negotiations among the five.

Canadian Ambassador Yves Fortier, whose country is one of the 10 non-permanent members of the council, predicted overwhelming support for the embargo, although he professed to know none of the details of the agreement.

“We voted an embargo, and it’s working as far as movements by sea and land are concerned, but we do have evidence that there are loopholes by air,” Fortier said. “We want to plug those loopholes, and I have every confidence that the unity of the council will be maintained.”

Although the permanent Security Council members had reached agreement in principle on an air embargo Monday, ambassadors of the five nations--the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--met for three hours at the French mission Wednesday night without being able to tie up the final points.

Asked what issues were still holding up presentation of a draft resolution to the other 10 Security Council members, one diplomat explained that seemingly petty details can still be important.

“Everybody agrees that an embargo should require inspection of planes going into Iraq, but some think it unnecessary to inspect planes coming out,” said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“If there’s doubt about something going in on a plane carrying humanitarian goods exempted from the embargo, who’s going to decide? There has to be a clear system if we’re going to start using force to intercept civilian planes that are suspected of violations,” he added.

Some participants in the discussions reported that French delegates, who demanded further council action after Iraqi troops invaded their ambassador’s residence in Kuwait last week, have asked that a vote be held off until the arrival of President Francois Mitterrand on Monday.

Finnish Ambassador Marjatta Rasi, chairman of the Security Council’s sanctions committee, said a vote may even be postponed until later next week, when foreign ministers will be in attendance for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

Soviet Ambassador Yuli M. Vorontsov, the council president, earlier had predicted a vote by week’s end.

In Washington, a senior Bush Administration official said the United States supports the proposal for an air blockade, although he conceded it would be difficult to enforce.

“There are complications in an air blockade that you don’t have with a sea blockade,” the official said. “You can shoot the rudder or propeller off a ship and it doesn’t sink. You can’t do the same thing with an aircraft.”

The Security Council on Thursday night postponed a vote on a $2-billion plan to ease the effects on Jordan of the anti-Iraqi trade and arms embargo already in place. Jordan, a major trading partner of Iraq, has espoused its neighbor’s cause politically but accepted the council’s sanctions orders and claims to have been hardest hit by the trade ban.

Early today, the ruling Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council issued a hard-line statement that reiterated Hussein’s refusal to retreat from occupied Kuwait. “Let everybody understand that this battle is going to become the mother (and father) or all battles,” said the Iraqi statement, which added that there is “not a single chance” for withdrawal.

The Iraqi information minister, meanwhile, said he expects “reciprocal treatment” from American broadcasters because Iraq had allowed Bush’s speech to be aired on Iraqi TV. In any event, he said, if no one airs the message, Iraq would find “alternate ways” to transmit it.

The White House declined to offer advice to American networks about whether to air the taped message. White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk said that if Iraq gave U.S. officials a copy of the tape, they would take it “out of diplomatic courtesy.” But Popadiuk suggested Iraq could just as well hand over copies of the tape directly to U.S. networks.

Officials from the four major U.S. television networks said as of Thursday night that they had not received any Iraqi video. Only one network, CNN, said it expects to air the video in its entirety.

“The reasoning is that the world is not far from a state of war, and Saddam Hussein is a crucial figure in that,” said Eason Jordon, CNN’s manager of international news. “We feel like what he has to say is important.”

The other three networks said they intend to make a decision only after reviewing the tape.

In testimony Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.N. Ambassador Pickering complained that U.S. delinquency in paying its dues to the international organization “could hobble our ability to mount an effective U.N. response to Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait and the effort to capitalize on the progress we have made on other issues.”

The United States currently owes $520 million in regular assessments, plus $150 million for special peacekeeping costs. During much of the Reagan Administration, conservatives complained that the General Assembly was hostile to American views of the Third World and Israel. Congress cut payment of regular dues by half, pending a presidential finding that the United Nations had reformed its spending practices.

However, in the past few years, U.N. attitudes toward the United States have warmed considerably.

In Beijing, Asian Games officials reported that 43 athletes from the Kuwaiti national team had arrived to participate in the competition that begins Saturday. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, most of Kuwait’s national team was trapped in the country. The 43 had been training elsewhere.

An Iraqi soccer team that came early for other events will head home, but the rest of the Iraqi team had not yet arrived in China.

Zafar Imam, deputy secretary general of the Bangladesh Olympic Assn., said his nation was among those voting against Iraq.

“We are very much in favor of Kuwait, because they (Iraq) invaded Kuwait, they destroyed the office of the Olympic Council of Asia and they killed the president of the Olympic Council of Asia,” Imam said in an interview after the vote.

Iraqi officials responded to the vote with anger.

An Iraqi National Olympic Committee statement called the vote “a clear and flagrant violation of the (Olympic Committee of Asia) constitution and all its principles and values of fair treatment for all members.” It said the action “will push our sports and Olympic institutions to paths that will jeopardize their unity and harmony.”

Meanwhile, Jordan’s King Hussein, who met Wednesday with King Hassan II of Morocco and President Chadli Bendjedid of Algeria, will carry the “thoughts, views and expectations” expressed at that meeting to Iraq, Algeria Radio said Thursday.

There were conflicting reports in Amman, the Jordanian capital, about the outcome of meeting of the three leaders.

According to one source, the three leaders will propose to Saddam Hussein that he withdraw his troops from Kuwait and that elections be conducted there six months later to determine the oil-rich state’s future.

A Jordanian official said that the three will try to work out a formula for Iraqi withdrawal linked to discussions later on other Middle East problems, including the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

In the meantime, Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, put forth another proposal, which calls for talks involving Iraq’s Hussein, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the U.N. secretary general, Javier Perez de Cuellar.

The PLO has been one of Iraq’s strongest supporters since the invasion of Kuwait, and the parameters of the talks suggested by Arafat differ in no way from what Iraq’s Hussein has offered: no guaranteed withdrawal from Kuwait and a linkage of all Middle East conflicts.

Jordanian officials say they are pessimistic about the chances of King Hussein’s latest mission succeeding. A previous effort ended two weeks ago with Iraq’s Hussein flatly rejecting the notion of pulling out of Kuwait.

Shannon reported from the United Nations and Holley from Beijing. Times staff writers Daniel Williams, in Amman, Jordan, and Thomas B. Rosenstiel, Norman Kempster and Karen Tumulty, in Washington, contributed to this story.

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INTERNATIONAL FORCE VS. IRAQ

A look at the numbers of troops and military equipment deployed by the world’s nations to the Persian Gulf: Britain: Flotilla including: 1 destroyer 2 frigates 3 minesweepers 4 support ships 2 squadrons of Tornado and 1 squadron of Jaguar fighter-bombers Armored brigade to be sent Canada: 2 destroyers 1 supply ship Belgium: 2 minehunters 1 supply ship Spain: 1 frigate 2 corvettes France: 14 warships 190 paratroopers, has committed 13,000 troops 100 warplanes 48 tanks Egypt: 5,000 ground troops, will send 14,000 more Netherlands: 2 frigates Morocco: 1,500 ground troops United States: More than 165, 000 troops, in the area or en route About 30 ships including: 3 aircraft carriers 1 battleship 2 hospital ships 22 stealth fighter-bombers Soviet Union: 1 destroyer 1 support ship Syria: 4,000 ground troops, will send 15,000 more Greece: 1 frigate Italy: 2 frigates 2 corvettes 1 supply ship Pakistan: 2,000 troops with 3,000 more due Bangladesh: 2,000 ground troops Australia: 2 guided missile frigates 1 supply ship Gulf Cooperation Council: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and until Aug. 2, Kuwait 17,000 front-line troops; they will be supported by 125,000 council and other local Arab troops plus 800 tanks, 330 combat aircraft and 36 naval units. IRAQ FORCES Army: regular 555,000

reserves 480,000 Tanks: 5,500, including 500 T-72s. Heavy Artillery: 3,500 Combat Aircraft: 500-plus Navy: 1 frigate, 8 missile attack craft, 6 torpedo boats Missiles: 800-plus; surface-to-surface and surface-to-air