Bush Says War Is Not Imminent : Gulf crisis: Key lawmakers are assured that he will give sanctions more time. The President avoids a commitment to seek congressional approval for war.

President Bush, seeking to mute congressional criticism of his Persian Gulf policies, assured key lawmakers Wednesday that war with Iraq is not imminent and that he will give sanctions more time to compel an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

After a week of mounting doubt, confusion and criticism of Bush’s decision to almost double the number of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, congressional leaders who met with the President said the bipartisan consensus supporting the Administration has, for the time being at least, been restored.

“We’re back on track,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) declared.

“The President made clear that the recent deployment is not . . . a decision to use force, but rather is intended to create the credible option of using force, should that become necessary and appropriate,” Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) added.

While most of the lawmakers who attended the meeting said they are more reassured that war is not imminent, the President and congressional Democrats clearly remain at odds over Bush’s refusal to agree to seek the consent of Congress before going to war against Iraq.

“The President did not indicate either a commitment to do that or a refusal to do that,” Mitchell said. The Senate leader said that he and other Democrats had pressed Bush on that point by stressing their view that the Constitution requires the President to seek congressional approval before deciding to use military force.

At one point, as Mitchell and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) sought to pin him down on the issue of constitutional prerogatives, Bush pulled a copy of the Constitution from his jacket pocket and admonished the Democrats: “I know what the Constitution says--but it also says I am commander in chief,” according to Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Responding to questions about Democratic demands that Congress be consulted before military action is taken against Iraq, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said that Bush will respect the Constitution, which stipulates that only Congress has the authority to declare war.

But Baker reiterated the Administration’s view that Bush has the authority to respond with force if American lives or interests are threatened. “It’s a question of what the Constitution requires,” he said.

Other lawmakers who attended the nearly two-hour meeting said Bush remained cool and noncommittal toward proposals by some members of his own party to convene a special session of Congress to debate the gulf crisis.

“He didn’t rule it out and he didn’t rule it in,” Dole said, adding that the question of a more formal role for Congress in the Persian Gulf policy-making process is something Bush will decide after he returns later this month from his upcoming trip to the Middle East and Europe.

Congressional concern that the United States is moving too quickly down the road to war mounted after Bush announced last week that he was sending up to 240,000 more troops to the region, which will give Operation Desert Shield an offensive capability.

That decision--along with suggestions by Administration officials that economic sanctions were not working quickly enough to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait within a reasonable time frame--threatened to split the fragile bipartisan consensus backing the President’s policies. For the first time, leading Democrats stepped forward to voice sharp criticism of Bush’s handling of the 15-week crisis.

After the meeting with Bush, however, most lawmakers either muted their criticism or expressed renewed support for the President, saying that they were reassured by his pledge to continue to seek a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Sanctions “can’t work without a credible offensive option,” said Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense and a key figure in Congress on military affairs. Expressing support for the buildup as “the way to avoid war,” Murtha said that there is “no way you can scare (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein with just a couple hundred thousand people.”

“The President was very candid about the pressures of this situation . . . but again he said he wants sanctions to work. He wants very much to resolve this conflict through diplomatic channels,” said Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But while House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said the lawmakers counseled Bush to exercise “patient strength” by giving sanctions ample time to work, not all Democrats are convinced that Bush will do so.

The sharpest note of dissent was sounded by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who did not attend the meeting with Bush but did attend a closed-door briefing that Baker and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney later gave to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Kennedy, one of the most vocal critics of the Administration’s gulf policies on Capitol Hill, did not go into details of the classified briefing. But he said afterward that he was not reassured by what he heard.

“I am increasingly concerned that President Bush is preparing to take this country unilaterally into war in the Persian Gulf, without the approval of Congress and without the support of the American people,” Kennedy said.

He added that public hearings on the Administration’s gulf policies--hearings scheduled by Democratic leaders in the wake of Bush’s decision to send more troops to Saudi Arabia--will begin next week in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Congress must not remain silent . . . (but) must debate these issues now, while there is still time to stop this needless war before it starts,” Kennedy said.

Democrats in the House plan to convene similar hearings during the midwinter congressional recess, but no dates have yet been set.

Much of the discussion with Baker and Cheney, and with Bush earlier in the day, centered on how well the sanctions against Iraq are working and how much longer they should be given before a decision is taken to compel Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait by force.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said Cheney told lawmakers that the embargo has prevented Iraq from exporting any of its oil output except for a small portion that is being shipped by truck to Jordan.

Warner said it is “clear that the embargoes are beginning to work.” He said it is far less certain, however, that they would work fast enough to offset such concerns as the morale of U.S. forces deployed in the Saudi desert and the likelihood that the anti-Iraq coalition assembled by Bush will begin to waver with the passage of time.

Noting that “calling up the reserves is very expensive,” Murtha estimated the new troop buildup ordered by Bush would more than double the $17-billion tab for the initial Desert Shield deployment.