U.S. Will Increase Troops in Arabia by Up to 100,000 : Gulf crisis: Cheney links the buildup to expanded Iraqi forces in and near Kuwait. Emphasis is expected to be on bringing in heavy armor from Europe.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Thursday that he may send as many as 100,000 more troops to join the 210,000 American personnel already deployed in Saudi Arabia to counter an expanded and increasingly fortified Iraqi force.

A major element of the buildup is expected to be heavy armor units, many of them likely to be rotated from Europe, to match up against a huge force of Iraqi tanks now in defensive positions in Kuwait.

“We are not at the point yet where we want to stop adding forces,” Cheney said in a series of interviews on the four television networks. He linked the expected American buildup to the growth of Iraq’s force in and near Kuwait, now numbering more than 430,000. “We’ve never set an upper limit” on the U.S. contingent, he declared.

Cheney and military analysts have said that the troops already in place are adequate to defend Saudi Arabia, but the defense secretary avoided linking the buildup to any U.S. plans for offensive action against Iraq.

“Our mission is today . . . to deter further aggression, to defend Saudi Arabia and enforce the sanctions,” Cheney said. “We also have the capability, obviously, to give the President a range of other options should another option be necessary. And we haven’t ruled out other options.”

He also warned that the increasing pinch of economic sanctions may prompt Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to lash out militarily at Saudi Arabia or at Israel before shortages of tires, spare parts and fuel sap his forces.

In addition to continued “aggression” against Kuwait, such actions would constitute provocations that would leave the United States and its allies “no choice but to respond,” Cheney said.

He also addressed, for the first time publicly, the issue of potential casualties, which has become a sensitive factor in the Bush Administration’s decision-making.

“No one should underestimate the cost of conflict,” Cheney warned. “No one should assume that such a conflict would be cheap or easy.”

Cheney’s comments appear to reflect a growing consensus within the Bush Administration that nothing short of a military offensive will budge Iraqi troops from their trenches. Echoing an assessment Thursday by CIA Director William H. Webster, Cheney said that Saddam Hussein “gives no indication whatsoever, in spite of the public talk . . . that he has any indication of withdrawing from Kuwait.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State James A. Baker III was considering a trip to Saudi Arabia, other Persian Gulf states and Europe, perhaps as early as next week, to shore up the multinational alliance against Iraq, a senior State Department official said.

United Press International reported that Baker’s purpose would be to seek Saudi approval for offensive military action if the trade embargo does not force Iraq to pull out of Kuwait. However, the State Department official said he was unaware of such a purpose.

Although the Saudi government’s official public position is to oppose the use of its territory for offensive military action, Saudi officials are known to have told Baker and other American officials in private that they would support the use of force if sanctions fail to work.

Baker is spending a long weekend at his ranch in Wyoming. Cheney plans to join him there, ostensibly to go fishing. The senior State Department official said that Baker is not expected to make a final decision to travel to the gulf until early next week.

The possible deployment of more troops probably would occur simultaneously with a plan to replace some American personnel already in Saudi Arabia with fresh troops from the United States and Europe. The rotation and expansion would take months to complete, Pentagon officials said.

In early January, the elite 82nd Airborne Division may be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, Cheney said. The lightly armed division of paratroopers was the first ground unit to arrive in Saudi Arabia, and Cheney said that it could be replaced with a more heavily armed tank or infantry division.

Decisions on which new units to send to Saudi Arabia and how to enlarge the force are expected to come early next week after meetings in Saudi Arabia this week between Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lt. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of Operation Desert Shield forces.

The diversion of substantial U.S. Army forces from Western Europe to Saudi Arabia would remain a politically sensitive move even though East-West tensions in Europe have eased and calls for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the continent have increased.

The United States has a little more than 200,000 troops based in Germany. Cheney said armored and infantry divisions--the kinds now based in Germany--”are the most useful forces” to face a heavily armed tank force of the type that Iraq has fielded in Kuwait.

“Those are the kinds of forces we like to have in the area and we may well send more,” he said.

Responding to budget pressures and political changes in Europe, Congress has directed the Pentagon to withdraw 50,000 U.S. troops from Western Europe this year. Cheney said that “we might simply transfer some of those to Saudi Arabia.”

Pentagon analysts said that option would be cheaper and faster than dispatching such forces from the United States.

Still, Pentagon sources cautioned that it could take months before the new ground troops could be in place with their equipment, even if they came from Western Europe.

Pentagon officials said that in drafting their rotation plans, the military services have ruled out the use of combat forces from the National Guard and Reserves.

Without congressional authorization extending the length of time that the President can call reserve troops, Cheney does not want to use the 10 National Guard Army divisions based in the United States.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this report.