Hard-Liners Decry Shevardnadze’s Gulf Policy

Hard-line parliamentary deputies denounced Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze Friday and said any deployment of Soviet troops to the Persian Gulf would make the Soviet Union a target for Iraqi missile attack.

The Soyuz (Union) group accused Shevardnadze of overstepping his authority in New York last week by declaring that Moscow was willing to send troops under auspices of the United Nations.

“Who sanctioned Shevardnadze’s statement?” asked Soyuz, which claims 458 legislators in the 2,000-strong Congress of People’s Deputies.

“Were we not assured . . . during the debate on the Afghan adventure that in the future any decision on sending Soviet military units overseas would be taken only with the approval of Parliament?”

The 1979 Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan was decided in secret by top Communist leaders. The war lasted nine years, costing thousands of lives and leaving a deep scar in Soviet political life.

Soyuz, fiercely opposed to radical reform and committed to preservation of the Soviet Union, recalled that Iraq had threatened measures against any country involved in military action against it.

“This means that Iraqi rockets, armed with bacteriological and chemical warheads, would not be fired at the U.S. and Britain, which are thousands of miles from the conflict zone, but against our territory, against the Transcaucasia, the northern Caucasus region and Central Asia,” the statement said.

“Does the person who took the decision on participation of a Soviet military contingent in possible military operations in the gulf have any idea of the consequences of such actions?” Soyuz asked.

Iraqi territory lies only 300 miles from Soviet frontiers. The buildup of U.S. forces in the area has already drawn expressions of concern from hard-line Soviet military officials, who charge that Washington plans a long-term stationing of troops there.

Shevardnadze said Soviet troops could be sent to the gulf only as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force. About 300,000 soldiers, chiefly American, are already deployed there.

But the Soviet Union still publicly rules out direct military action against Iraq, which attacked and occupied Kuwait on Aug. 2.

Asked Thursday if he was ready to send Soviet forces to the gulf, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told journalists he thinks that there are more than enough troops in the area.

The Soviet Union was Iraq’s chief arms supplier until the invasion of Kuwait, when it cut all deliveries and joined economic sanctions against President Saddam Hussein.