Senate Endorses Bush Moves to Halt Iraq : Gulf crisis: Opponents see the ‘signal of unity’ as a potential ‘blank check’ for the President to wage war.

The Senate today endorsed President Bush’s efforts to “deter Iraqi aggression” despite some members’ concerns that the resolution could be seen as giving Bush broad authority to wage war.

The resolution of support passed 96 to 3. It followed an overwhelming House vote Monday expressing similar sentiments.

“This resolution is not an authorization for the use of force, now or in the future,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) told his colleagues before the vote. “This resolution is not a blank check.”

Senators voting on the prevailing side said they believed it was important to send a signal of unity around the world by giving legislative support to Bush’s moves so far.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) joined Sens. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) and Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) in voting against the resolution. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) was not present.

Kennedy called the language of the resolution “a blank-check endorsement for future actions” that abdicates Congress’ power to declare war.

Meanwhile, the United States put on a show of strength in the Persian Gulf today, sending an aircraft carrier into the dangerous waters for the first time in 16 years and staging a 15,000-Marine mock amphibious assault.

And for the first time today, France used naval firepower to help enforce the U.N. trade embargo against Iraq. The warship Doudart de Lagree fired warning shots to halt a North Korean freighter near Djibouti in the Bab al Mandab strait, which links the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

French military officials said the freighter, the Sam Il Po, had defied an order to stop for inspection. The vessel was searched and then released when it did not appear to be violating the embargo.

The movement into the gulf of the carrier Independence was disclosed by the Pentagon only one day after Bush, in remarks to the United Nations, offered new optimism that the crisis with Iraq could be settled without war.

“They’re not conflicting signals,” Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said. “Things like exercises . . . are what you do to keep up the readiness of your forces.”

Williams said at a Pentagon briefing that the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade--a force of 15,000 Marines, mostly from Camp Lejeune, N.C.--was staging amphibious landings on a remote beach in the northern Arabian Sea.