Gulf Flights Grounded in Wake of U.S. Crashes

The Air Force grounded all training flights in the Persian Gulf area for a 24-hour period ending today in order to discuss with pilots the recent rash of U.S. aircraft accidents in Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon announced.

The “flying stand-down” was declared Wednesday at noon Saudi time and lifted at noon today, Pete Williams, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in Washington.

The halt applied to all training flights but not to reconnaissance missions and other “operational patrols,” said another spokesman, Col. Miguel Monteverde.

“There was no degradation of our ability to defend ourselves,” Monteverde said.

There are an estimated 700 Air Force combat and support aircraft in the gulf area as part of Operation Desert Shield.

“The Air Force declared a flying stand-down for one day to conduct safety awareness meetings with Air Force pilots,” Williams said, “to get together with everybody and just sort of review what they need to do to fly more safely.”

The official death toll for Operation Desert Shield rose to 31 on Wednesday when an Air Force F-111 fighter-bomber crashed on a training mission in Saudi Arabia, killing both crew members. On Monday, two pilots were killed in the crash of an Air Force F-4 Phantom reconnaissance jet in Saudi Arabia, and just hours earlier two Marine Corps UH-1 Huey helicopters, each carrying four crew members, crashed over the Arabian Sea, killing all eight men.

Also today, Britain turned up the pressure on Iraq, saying the U.S.-led alliance in the Persian Gulf must decide within weeks whether sanctions--or war--will force President Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait.

Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said the anti-Iraq coalition will have to assess whether the diplomatic isolation of Baghdad, economic sanctions and an oil blockade will drive Iraq from the emirate it seized Aug. 2.

Within a matter of weeks the alliance must “take stock whether these pressures are going to do the job or whether the military option will have to be prepared,” he told British Broadcasting Corp. television.

A Foreign Office spokesman said Britain believes it is vital to keep pressure on Hussein and “leave him in no doubt that a military option exists.”