Signs of Terrorist Activity Reported at All-Time High : Gulf crisis: Suspect groups on three continents are planning attacks ‘with Iraqi connivance,’ officials say.

The United States and its allies are facing the broadest terrorism threat ever from Iraqi-sponsored agents and sympathetic terrorist groups, U.S. officials said Friday.

Government counterterrorism officials said they have no doubt that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein intends to carry out his threats to attack U.S. and allied interests as a result of the American-led military deployment in the Middle East aimed at reversing Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait.

U.S. analysts have detected unprecedented movement--one said it has “jumped off the scale”--of known terrorists on three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia. The analysts are bracing for a wave of terrorist attacks against a broad range of American and allied targets, including airliners, embassies, military installations and Middle East oil fields.

Unlike the overseas situation, however, the threat level has not intensified inside the United States, according to sources familiar with counterterrorism. Reports of threatening activities have been received, but none has checked out, an official said.

Nevertheless, the FBI has been placed on a high degree of alert because the Iraqis and their agents are known to have the capability for acts here.

Counterterrorism specialists are aware of several terrorist operations already in place outside this country that could be sprung “at any moment,” according to U.S. government officials. But the officials, citing security concerns, would not comment on what steps are being taken to preempt these attacks.

Widespread anti-Western terrorist actions are considered a certainty if war breaks out in the Middle East, officials said. But many government counterterrorism experts also see a substantial threat even without outright hostilities between Iraq and the United States.

“There is no doubt there is serious planning of terrorist attacks under way with Iraqi connivance. The amount of reporting on people and movement has just jumped off the scale,” said one government official who tracks terrorist activity.

“The capability is in place. You could have a significant terrorist incident at any time,” the official said.

The sources of the terrorist threat are broader than any the United States has ever faced at one time, officials said. They include:

The Iraqi government itself, which has a long history of employing terror against its foreign enemies and internal dissidents. Baghdad has at its disposal a large and experienced intelligence service, a far-flung diplomatic corps and commercial interests such as Iraqi Airways that operate around the world.

Professional terrorist organizations, such as those run by Abul Abbas and Abu Nidal, generously supported by Iraq and operating out of Baghdad, that could mount terror attacks for mercenary or ideological purposes.

Palestinians, Arab nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists angered by the Western presence in the Persian Gulf who could spontaneously attack U.S. interests without direction from Baghdad. Or, one U.S. official suggested, “The Iraqis could seize on any such group which is particularly rabid on some issue and give them some targets or explosives.”

Provocateurs from a number of groups or nations, such as Iran, that might benefit from a war between Iraq and the United States. Iran is pursuing a “zigzag” strategy, alternating between support for Baghdad and the West, U.S. officials noted. But Iran may believe its interests are best served by the destruction of Hussein and his weaponry, allowing Tehran to emerge as the region’s preeminent military power.

“The attempts would be on a broad scale, a variety of geographic settings and against a variety of targets, wherever the opportunity presents itself,” an Administration terrorism specialist said. He noted that the predictable targets--airliners and airports, diplomatic missions--were at risk, and suggested that other sites were being “cased” by potential terrorists.

He refused to elaborate further on government knowledge of the terrorists’ planning.

At the same time, counterterrorist analysts must weigh the surge in credible threats against Hussein’s interest in keeping the West off balance by “hyping the threat,” one government official explained. “We take it all very seriously. But it is also part of the propaganda game.”

The sources of the threat “span the horizon from secular Palestinians who want a West Bank state to followers of (the late Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini who want to expel the West from the Middle East,” an Administration official said.

The one common bond uniting the disparate groups is hostility to the West and a belief that the large Western military presence in the gulf is a threat to their existence. While many of the groups have in the past been hostile, even murderous, toward each other, they have joined temporarily in a bond based on the theory that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” a U.S. official explained.

“All bets are off on this one,” he added.

The potential targets of terror groups are as varied as the possible sources, officials said. Europe was rated a particularly “target-rich” area, both because of the broad U.S. interests there and the number of European nations participating in the military mission in the Persian Gulf region.

But preparations for possible attacks have also been seen throughout the Arab Middle East, particularly in nations that have supported the U.S. military buildup.

One such attack may have been thwarted earlier this week when Egyptian authorities arrested several suspected pro-Iraqi Palestinian extremists and seized a number of arms and explosives believed to be linked to a planned terror attack.

Egyptian officials said the suspects are members of the Abu Nidal terrorist group sent to carry out acts of subversion against Cairo, which is participating in the U.S.-led expeditionary force in Saudi Arabia.

American officials consider it likely that Hussein was directly responsible for the presence of the terrorist operatives in Egypt.

Times staff writers Robin Wright, in Washington, and Douglas Jehl, in Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

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