U.S. Plans Talks on Gulf Offensive : Strategy: Officials are becoming convinced that Iraq will not quit Kuwait. Baker will confer with allies on the embargo and a timetable for possible military action.

Within the next week, the Bush Administration will discuss a timetable for possible use of military force against Iraqi forces in Kuwait at talks with U.S. allies in Europe and the Persian Gulf, sources said Monday.

With Administration officials increasingly convinced that U.N. sanctions will not force Iraq to withdraw, Secretary of State James A. Baker III will visit Europe, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, perhaps as early as this weekend, to assess the current status of the embargo and to consider additional steps, including a military offensive, the sources said.

A senior government official in Washington declared that if the United States were to exclude the military option, “it would be hard to find a scenario with any link to reality.” He added that the most likely time for a U.S. offensive would be in December or January, “although it could come earlier or a little later.”

The official, who is involved in Persian Gulf strategy, indicated that he considers war almost inevitable and said: “I know of no one who disagrees with my assessment of the situation and what we have to do to achieve our goals.”

In Washington and Saudi Arabia, senior U.S. officials, who agreed to interviews on condition that they not be identified, said the time is fast approaching when a decision must be made on how much more time sanctions will be given to work.

And in speeches in California, which a Washington official said may be the beginning of an orchestrated effort to prepare the American public for war, both Baker and President Bush warned that the United States would not hesitate to use force to resolve the Persian Gulf crisis if necessary.

In Saudi Arabia, a U.S. official said there is “absolutely no cause” for optimism that Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein will back down, adding that “we are approaching the moment at which we’ll have to make a judgment about how long we will give sanctions to work.”

Although the official said “no judgment has been made that sanctions will not work,” government analysts in Washington working on the crisis have concluded that the sanctions alone will not bring enough pressure on Hussein to force him to abandon Kuwait.

Other U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia said that a new sense of urgency about resolving the crisis was rooted partly in the destruction of Kuwait, but also in increasing concern about flagging American public support for what could be a prolonged standoff.

The Iraqis are continuing to pour troops into Kuwait and build up their defensive fortifications while looting the country of enough materials and supplies to keep Iraq from feeling the full impact of the economic sanctions, according to U.S. intelligence sources. The sanctions have had practically no effect on the Iraqi military, the sources said.

U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia said that new concerns also have been raised about the time required to reinforce allied troops and equipment already there and to prepare for combat in alien territory.

Even without a final decision about offensive operations, “you have to make some decisions now to provide options for military force somewhere down the road,” said one official. “You have to make a decision to flesh out the options now if you’re actually going to have those options when it comes to the moment when you weigh whether to use them or not.”

Other U.S. officials indicated that some of the pressure for a decision on a military option has come from U.S. theater commanders who, in making clear that more troops would be needed for any U.S. ground attack against Iraq’s million-strong army, have asked for new guidance about the nature of the U.S. mission in the gulf.

“A commander doesn’t just ask for more troops,” one source said. “He asks for his mission.”

Even though the United States has 210,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has said that as many as 100,000 more may be deployed, the military still lacks the guaranteed capability to launch an offensive operation sufficient to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, officials said.

Among other items likely to be on the agenda of the Baker visit are discussions of future U.N. and Arab League resolutions against Iraq, discussions of enforcement of sanctions and further talk about burden-sharing and the economic impact of the gulf crisis.

But the principal goal of the trip, a U.S. official in Saudi Arabia said, will be to “trade assessments of the situation” as a means of guiding military preparations.

At the State Department, spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said the purpose of Baker’s trip is to “consult with our coalition partners about the general situation in the gulf and is part of our ongoing diplomatic effort to achieve full compliance with the U.N. resolutions, with emphasis on effective implementation of the sanctions.”

However, Baker made clear that the United States will not wait indefinitely for the sanctions to work. “Saddam Hussein must realize there is a limit to the international community’s patience,” he said Monday in a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

Other U.S. officials said that Baker also hopes to repair some erosion in the international coalition, making sure that U.S. allies stand fast in opposing Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.

A senior Pentagon official said Baker’s trip comes at a critical time, both because strains have begun to appear in the anti-Iraq coalition and because key military decisions must be made now if an offensive operation is contemplated before the end of the year.

“Until a couple of weeks ago, everybody was on board” behind Bush’s demand for an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the official said. “But in the last two weeks, all kinds of contradictory signals have been sent,” suggesting the possibility of some sort of negotiated deal that would allow Hussein to keep part of Kuwait.

Hussein’s strategy ever since Bush dispatched troops to Saudi Arabia after the Aug. 2 invasion has been to solidify his grip on Kuwait and to avoid any overt provocation of U.S. forces while engaging in a standoff that he hopes will last long enough to erode the international forces aligned against him.

“He can sit there indefinitely, and he knows how to absorb pain,” said a U.S. official. “But we can’t sit there forever. We’ve got to make some hard decisions about how to resolve it, and those decisions may come sooner rather than later.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.