Egypt Urges Softer Stance Against Iraq : Strategy: Mubarak asks U.S. to postpone military action as part of a continuing effort to moderate other Arab demands that would leave Baghdad crippled.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has asked the United States to postpone military action against Iraq for up to three months, while a senior Egyptian diplomat said Egypt is not committed to wiping out Iraq’s military capability.

Even as Mubarak and other key Arab leaders torpedoed the idea of an emergency Arab summit to resolve the Persian Gulf crisis, the two Egyptian officials’ comments marked a continuing move by Egypt toward moderating other Arab demands for a decisive resolution that would leave Iraq crippled in its wake.

“We think that Iraq is a part of the Arab world, and Iraqi power is a part of the Arab world, and we do not want to destroy the Iraqi power,” Egypt’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sayed Misri, said in a recent interview. “Without having to harm the Iraqi people or the Iraqi country or the Iraqi military, we think security in the region could be achieved through other means.”

Mubarak, meanwhile, told reporters in Cairo on Friday that he has asked President Bush to delay ordering a military strike against Iraq in order to give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein more time to think about withdrawing from Kuwait.

“To give a further chance to the Iraqi president to reconsider his position, and in order to avert a destructive war, I have asked President Bush and his secretary of state to postpone a military option . . . and allow a chance of two or three months to try to achieve peace,” he said.

Egyptian officials continued to emphasize that, in the days leading up to President Bush’s meetings with key Arab leaders, no decision has been made on a military resolution to the crisis.

“The military option still is not decided on and still needs clear approval from the parties involved in the military effort,” Misri said, adding that such a decision is not likely to be made “right away.”

“We want to explore all avenues for a peaceful settlement, whether within the Arab domain or the international domain--without dropping the possibility of the resort to use of force if every other thing fails,” he said.

Mubarak’s announcement came a day after he and Syrian President Hafez Assad joined Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in rejecting a proposal by Morocco’s King Hassan II for an emergency Arab summit on the crisis, declaring that Iraq’s continuing refusal to withdraw from Kuwait would render such a meeting fruitless.

“In light of the statements of the Iraqi government officials, who have raised doubts about the Moroccan call and who have put pre-conditions that make it difficult--if not impossible, to convene such a summit . . .,” a communique said, the Egyptian and Syrian leaders “expressed their regret for Iraq’s abortion of any political settlement that aims at restoring the situation in Kuwait to what it was prior to Aug. 2.”

Iraq had initially demanded that its occupation of Kuwait be discussed in the context of regional security issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a proposal that some Arab officials indicated privately they might be willing to consider.

Leading moderate Arab leaders appeared to consider the proposal dead, however, when Iraq’s first deputy prime minister, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said Baghdad also is seeking to erase the resolutions of the Aug. 10 Arab summit in Cairo, which demanded Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait and endorsed the idea of dispatching troops to help defend Saudi Arabia from further Iraqi aggression.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, from the beginning had said a new Arab summit would be a waste of time unless Iraq withdraws from Kuwait.

Mubarak also told Egyptian reporters Friday that both the Soviet Union and China are prepared to endorse a military option in the United Nations if a resolution authorizing military force comes to a vote.

Moscow and Beijing “agree with us on the need to exhaust all prospects for a solution based on total and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi troops from the occupied Kuwaiti territory and reinstatement of legitimacy to Kuwait,” Mubarak said. “The Soviet Union and China are not opposed to the military option.”

Soviet envoy Alexander Belonogov held talks with Mubarak on Friday and later told reporters: “Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must be convinced that the situation in the gulf is very dangerous and that the time element is not in his favor.”

Although Arab leaders who have dispatched troops to the gulf appear in harmony on the advisability of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait by force if all diplomatic options are exhausted, Egypt has in the past week sent signals it is much less eager to cripple Iraq militarily than its neighbors in the gulf.

Mubarak this week announced that Egyptian troops would be authorized to enter Kuwait, but not Iraq, in the event of a military conflict.

Officials in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have made clear they will not be comfortable if Iraq is allowed to emerge from the crisis with its 1-million-man army and substantial weapons capability intact.

But Misri said “deterrence” against Iraq might be achievable through a coalition of local Arab powers, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states.

“Maybe Iraq would be included one day--who knows?--if the government changes,” he said.

Misri said Egypt will have completed within the next few days the installation of two full divisions in Saudi Arabia, one mechanized and one armored, for a total of more than 30,000 troops. Egypt is committed to dispatching even more if circumstances warrant it, the ambassador added.

Meanwhile, the secretary general of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullah Bishara, rejected proposals for an Arab summit and predicted the crisis would be resolved by Kuwait’s independence day, Feb. 25, most likely by war.

“I myself have no faith in an Arab solution,” Bishara, a Kuwaiti, told reporters in Dhahran this week. “Those who want to employ diplomacy . . . indulge in a wishful picnic. I do not believe diplomacy will be operative unless it sits comfortably and convincingly on the power of force.”