U.S. Weighs Options, Hopes to Avert All-Out War : Strategy: Officials want to resupply the embassy in Kuwait and restrict Iraqi access to airways--without provoking hostility.

The Bush Administration is exploring new moves in the Persian Gulf crisis in an effort to break the lengthening stalemate there without incurring the huge casualties of all-out war, officials said Thursday.

Already, White House officials are seeking United Nations approval for a resupply column that would attempt to pass through Iraqi military lines and relieve the besieged U.S. Embassy in Kuwait city.

Other U.S. officials are considering ways to obtain a new U.N. resolution that would deny the use of Kuwaiti airspace to Iraqi aircraft and give the multinational force in the region authority to seize control of the skies above the tiny emirate.

Government lawyers are also studying the feasibility of seizing Iraqi assets worldwide, including bank deposits, ships and embargoed cargo, and selling them to underwrite the cost of the huge gulf military operation and the eventual rebuilding of occupied Kuwait.

The options are being pursued as a way to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein out of his present waiting-game strategy, yet keep intact the multinational coalition arrayed against him. Many in the coalition are adamantly opposed to a quick move toward military action.

But the new options under consideration all present a potential problem: They could provoke a military conflict, perhaps before the United States and its allies are fully ready to wage war.

U.S. commanders in Saudi Arabia last week asked for as many as 100,000 additional troops to augment the more than 210,000 U.S. servicemen and women already in the region, saying the new troops are needed because of the buildup of Iraqi forces in Kuwait.

Until the reinforcements arrive, which will take at least four weeks, military officials are particularly reluctant to see the United States or its allies take any steps that could trigger an Iraqi response demanding military retaliation.

President Bush said at a news conference Thursday that he is hopeful that Iraq would comply with any U.N. resolution to permit the shipment of food and water to the U.S. diplomats and others in the Kuwait embassy. But he added, “The whole ploy by Saddam Hussein is to starve them out. And I think that’s unconscionable.”

State Department officials said the embassy had supplies for three to four weeks at most. A White House source said that senior staff members were studying three means of resupplying the Kuwait mission:

A landing in Kuwait by an unarmed ship under the U.S. or U.N. flag with provisions for the embassy, which sits on a corniche near the water.

An overland convoy from Baghdad, also under U.N. auspices.

A forcible entry by Marines on ships or helicopters, which is all but certain to spark at least a limited military engagement with the Iraqi troops who ring the embassy.

The White House official stressed that no decision has been made to mount a resupply drive.

The British and U.S. embassies are the only ones still operating in Kuwait. Since the British compound is near that of the United States, it would presumably benefit from any resupply effort.

Administration officials calculate that peaceful efforts to resupply American diplomats could prompt Iraq to take a hostile step while preserving the “moral high ground” for the United States, a U.S. official said Thursday.

Until now, Hussein has refrained from any such provocation, ordering his pilots and ship captains to avoid confrontation with U.S. and allied forces and refraining from any overt brutality against U.S. hostages.

The political difficulty of a U.S. decision to take military action without provoking a hostile response, and Hussein’s careful avoidance of such provocation, has led some officials in Saudi Arabia to suggest that the stalemate is likely to continue.

Some Saudi officials predicted in recent interviews that Hussein will take overtly hostile action only when the sanctions bite deeper.

“We used to think we could get the Iraqis to do something stupid if it came down to that,” a Saudi official said this week. “But they’ve been very smart and are trying to make sure that we take the first step.”

Another proposal under consideration in Washington as a means of ratcheting up the pressure against Hussein is the possibility of asking the United Nations to declare Kuwaiti airspace off limits to Iraqi aircraft.

Such a resolution would presumably permit the use of limited force to back up the embargo, as the U.N. has allowed naval power to be used to enforce the blockade of Iraqi shipping. Any Iraqi aircraft attempting to take off from the three Kuwaiti airfields they have seized could be shot down under this resolution.

The proposal is particularly appealing to Army officials, who are not enthusiastic about the initiation of a ground campaign against the 430,000 Iraqi troops who are entrenched in fortified positions.

“It’s very logical, compelling, doable,” a senior Army officer said.

He argued that such an action would limit the Iraqi air force’s effectiveness by denying them training over the likely field of battle while reassuring allied nations that the United States is prepared to pursue military options short of all-out war.

But, judging from the way Iraqi aircraft are now flying in Kuwait, Baghdad is unlikely to accept such limitations without a fight.

While Iraqi fighter pilots have been careful not to stray outside Kuwait-Iraq airspace or otherwise provoke Americans, their midair tactics have made clear their determination to defend Iraqi airspace, according to Air Force commanders in Saudi Arabia.

A small group of reporters flying on an Air Force mission near the Iraqi border in north-central Saudi Arabia on Thursday observed a group of American F-15 fighters breaking off from a midair refueling stop to confront what one official described as a “high-speed Iraqi run at the border.”

In what an Air Force spokesman accompanying the group described as part of a continuing war of nerves between the enemy pilots, an undisclosed number of Iraqi fighters headed toward the border, only to break away as the American combat air patrol scrambled to block against a possible incursion.

Broder reported from Washington and Jehl from Saudi Arabia.