Congress Cautious About Arms Sale to Saudis but Support Is Indicated : Military: Tanks and Patriot missiles are included. A request for F-15 fighters is deferred.

The Administration’s proposed sale of $7.6 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia was received with criticism and caution on Capitol Hill on Thursday, but key lawmakers indicated that they probably would support it, despite charges that the White House had broken a promise to limit the sale to items essential to urgent Saudi defense needs.

Bowing to congressional pressure, the White House sent a scaled-down version of its original $21-billion Saudi arms package to Congress on Thursday. It deferred until early next year a request for an additional $14 billion in arms--including F-15 jet fighters.

However, the package still contains a number of controversial items--such as Patriot surface-to-air missiles and M1-2A tanks--that some lawmakers said do not fall within the category of urgent defense needs.

“It’s a real disappointment,” said Rep. Lawrence J. Smith (D-Fla.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“It’s hard to see how something can be needed for an emergency when it can’t even be delivered for at least a couple of years,” added California Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), referring to the inclusion of 150 M1-2As, the Army’s latest battle tank. Defense Department and congressional sources said that, even if the sale is approved as part of the emergency package, the tanks will not be delivered to Saudi Arabia for another 36 months.

Besides the Patriots and the tanks, the proposed package includes 200 Bradley fighting vehicles, TOW-2 anti-tank missiles, Apache attack helicopters, more than 200 armored personnel carriers, multiple-launch rocket systems and missiles and more than 10,000 trucks and other support vehicles.

Tacked on to the Saudi package is a separate proposal for a $37-million sale of M-60A3 tanks to Bahrain. But another notification of a $400-million sale of attack helicopters to the United Arab Emirates was not included by the Administration, contrary to expectations at the Pentagon.

Even in its pared-down version, the package is one of the largest weapons sales ever proposed for the region. The mixed reaction it received in Congress reflected lawmakers’ conflicting concerns about the need to support Saudi Arabia and President Bush’s Persian Gulf policies during a time of crisis on the one hand and the fear of fueling a regional arms race and possibly eroding Israel’s military superiority on the other.

At the United Nations, Israeli officials said Secretary of State James A. Baker III gave a tongue-lashing to Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy because of Israel’s opposition to the original arms package. The officials said Baker complained during the meeting Wednesday night that Israeli opposition complicated U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and its other allies in the gulf crisis.

However, the officials said, Baker agreed to permit an Israeli team to visit Washington to study the Saudi sale to make sure that it would not erode Israel’s technological advantage over all potential Arab adversaries.

Nonetheless, some in Congress challenged the package’s effect on Israel and the entire balance of power in the region.

“What they’ve sent us is a more reasonable proposal than what the Administration floated last week, but it still represents a new shot in the arm for the arms race in the Middle East,” California Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said.

“What the Administration has failed to do is to recognize that, after we’ve dealt with Saddam Hussein, our priority for the Middle East must be arms control.”

Several lawmakers who have tended to promote Israeli concerns and in the past have played key roles in opposing sales of arms to Saudi Arabia said they would try to block the sale unless the package was further modified to either exclude the tanks and Patriot missiles or to provide them to the Saudis on a conditional, leased basis.

“If, when this crisis is over, the Saudis sign a peace treaty with Israel like Egypt has done, then the leases can be converted to sales,” said California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo). “But if the Saudis continue to maintain a state of belligerency toward Israel, then I want the most sophisticated weapons in this package to be U.S.-owned and the lease to terminate.”

Lantos said that he expects the House Foreign Affairs Committee to schedule a hearing on the sale next week.

“We’re going to take a careful, line-by-line look at it to see if everything in the package is really necessary for the Saudis to cope with the current threat posed by Iraq,” added a senior source on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Despite these concerns, a number of key lawmakers said that they still expect the package to pass with some modifications.

“Some people who might otherwise have reservations are going to vote for it because they want to support the President in this crisis atmosphere,” Smith conceded.

As Congress debated the arms sale, the deposed emir of Kuwait made an emotional appeal to the United Nations, saying: “The fate of a people, of a nation, is in your hands.”

The six-member Iraqi delegation stalked out before Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah began his address to the General Assembly, in which he detailed the “horrors and suffering” of his people at the hands of Iraq. The emir received a standing ovation from the more than 2,000 delegates from 160 countries.

Meanwhile, Iraq drew condemnation by rounding up another American citizen and by announcing that food ration cards would not be issued to foreigners in Iraq and Kuwait.

More than 1 million foreigners, most of them Arabs and Asians, are still in Iraq and Kuwait. Basic foods are almost impossible to buy without coupons, and black-market prices are high.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher reported that the seizure of another American on the streets of Kuwait brought the total number of known American prisoners in Iraq and Kuwait to 101. Nearly 1,000 other Americans are stranded in Iraq and Kuwait but are free to move around to some degree.

Boucher said Iraqi officials allowed an American consular officer to visit eight Americans being held at the Monsour-Melia Hotel in Baghdad. The eight were rounded up in the last week in Kuwait.

“The American citizens told the consular officer that some of the detainees were caught by house searches,” Boucher said. “In most cases, security police or special forces troops dismantled apartment doors. And it appears that in most of these cases the troops were led to specific apartments by people who identified these apartments.”

Meanwhile, in the Red Sea a U.S. Navy frigate fired shots across the bow of an Iraqi tanker and stopped the vessel. It was released after a Navy boarding party searched it, the Defense Department said.

The tanker Tadmur at first ignored warnings from the frigate Elmer Montgomery but halted after the warship fired .50-caliber machine guns shots across the Tadmur’s bow, said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams.

It was the fourth time U.S. warships had fired warnings shots near Iraqi vessels since the Persian Gulf crisis began.