Gorbachev Declines to Back a Gulf Offensive : Mideast crisis: Bush’s long lobbying effort fails. Aides say they will put the proposed U.N. resolution on hold. Soviets regard it as premature.

President Bush, despite almost a month of intense lobbying, failed Monday to win endorsement from Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev for a new United Nations resolution authorizing a military offensive in the Persian Gulf crisis.

Bush had counted heavily on obtaining Gorbachev’s blessing of a tough new U.N. measure, but a Soviet spokesman made it clear Monday night that Gorbachev still considers a military offensive premature.

Bush’s failure to win the Soviet leader’s support, combined with the alarm expressed in Congress last week when he ordered the dispatch of more than 200,000 additional American troops to the gulf, sharply reduces the President’s freedom to orchestrate the confrontation with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or control the pace of events.

It is potentially even more damaging for Bush, whose handling of the crisis is already slipping badly in public opinion polls, to have sought and failed to win Soviet support for a tougher line on the opening day of the Paris summit. This may strengthen the hand of critics who say he is rushing precipitously toward war.

Administration officials indicated determination to continue pressing Moscow for its support on the resolution. And Gorbachev, even before his meeting with Bush, suggested that this may not be his final position on the sensitive issue.

But the setback posed both diplomatic and political problems for the American President.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater sought to put the best face on the development after Bush and Gorbachev completed a lengthy dinner meeting at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. He insisted that Moscow remains unwavering in its support for the existing U.N. sanctions and condemnation of Iraq.

And the Soviets continued to agree with Bush that a resort to military force cannot be ruled out.

“We are unified on this issue,” said Fitzwater, who added that in their discussions the two leaders “were concentrating on the areas we were together on.”

Both countries, he said, agree that aggression cannot be rewarded, both seek the immediate release of all hostages, and both believe that it is time to discuss the gulf crisis further in the U.N. Security Council.

Yet the failure to win an endorsement Monday for a new U.N. resolution was a clear setback for Bush, who had worked tirelessly in recent days to line up support not only from Gorbachev but from the leaders of other nations belonging to the Security Council.

Administration officials claimed privately that they had assurances of support from at least seven of the Council’s 15 members, and Secretary of State James A. Baker III plans to visit three others in the next four days.

Gorbachev was to be the capstone on the U.S. drive.

Now, Administration officials say, they will have to put the tougher resolution on hold while they renew their efforts to win over the Soviets and reassure domestic opinion in the United States.

Administration officials say Bush has not decided whether to go to war against Iraq but considers the U.N. resolution vital in his campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Hussein and reaffirm international support for a military attack to drive Iraq out of Kuwait if, in the end, economic sanctions fail to force him to withdraw.

The White House, obviously anticipating success with the Soviet leader, moved the only formally scheduled Bush-Gorbachev meeting from a breakfast on Tuesday to a dinner on Monday. And officials told reporters to be prepared for a joint press conference by Bush and Gorbachev, the format normally used for announcing major agreements.

Some told reporters privately that they were confident of success.

Instead, after the dinner, Fitzwater appeared in the temporary White House briefing room here along with Vitaly N. Ignatenko, Gorbachev’s press secretary, and offered a bare-bones summary of the dinner meeting. When asked why the two leaders had failed to appear as previously announced, Fitzwater said it had been a long day for Bush and Gorbachev and they had “confidence in their spokesmen.”

Fitzwater declared that the two leaders had reached “a conceptual agreement that force cannot be ruled out” if sanctions fail to compel Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait.

Indeed, Gorbachev in the past has said publicly that force cannot be ruled out, but he has repeatedly cautioned that sanctions should be given time to work. Further, the Soviets have expressed fears that a war with Iraq not only would result in heavy casualties but would be disastrous economically and environmentally.

Ignatenko called the dialogue between the two leaders “very important and useful” but said the existing U.N. resolutions and sanctions have not been given enough time to work and that additional consultations still must be held by Secretary of State Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

Baker, meanwhile, continues to try to line up support in the Security Council for a new resolution authorizing a military offensive. He leaves Wednesday to seek the support of other members of the Security Council--Yemen, Colombia and Malaysia--for the proposal even though Fitzwater insisted that “a decision on the U.N. resolution has not been made.”

Fitzwater said Hussein’s announcement in Baghdad on Monday that he is dispatching another 250,000 troops to Kuwait is another example of “his thumbing his nose at the U.N. resolution” and shows that he “has no intention of a peaceful resolution . . . a treacherous course to take.”

The Bush-Gorbachev meeting came during the three-day meeting of the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which ends here Wednesday. On Monday the two leaders joined the leaders of 20 other countries--15 belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and five members of the Warsaw Pact--in signing a sweeping non-nuclear or conventional arms reduction treaty calling for the destruction of tens of thousands of tanks and other weapons.

At a brief press conference Monday morning, Bush, in answering a reporter’s question, said he saw no irony in the fact that international forces headed by the United States were aligned against the Iraqi army at the same time the historic arms reduction treaty was being signed and peace was being celebrated in Europe.

“What I see,” he said, “is the fact that we are able to enter into a CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) agreement with full cooperation and support of the Soviet Union, who heretofore has been an enormous adversary of the West, and this now reduces to practically nil the tensions that have existed.

“It is the farthest-reaching arms control agreement in history,” Bush continued, “and it signals the world order that is emerging . . . and that is the best hope for rolling back the brutality and the aggression of Saddam Hussein, who has nothing to do with the CFE agreement.”

The message to the Iraqi strongman, he declared, is that the United States and the Soviet Union “are together as they stay in the United Nations against your brutal, naked aggression.”

Prior to the dinner meeting with Bush, Gorbachev told reporters that there would be no retreat from demands that Iraq, the Soviets’ onetime ally, withdraw from Kuwait.

“We all need patience,” Gorbachev said. “But that does not mean that we are going to relax, we are going to retreat. No, we are going to demand in a very resolute way. And the fact that we are working together--not only the Soviet Union and the United States, but the United Nations and the whole world are acting together--allows me to expect that in this very difficult crisis, resolutions will be found. And we will not waste time.”

Neither leader was available for comment after their dinner session, but Fitzwater said they agreed to continue meeting, but in a less formal way, “without hoopla” and in settings that would be “something less than a full-blown extravaganza.”

Although Gorbachev has sided with the United States ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the Soviet leader consistently has counseled patience in dealing with the crisis and has expressed hope that negotiations could lead to a peaceful settlement.

While Bush also has expressed hope for a peaceful ending, he has insisted that this could come about only by Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, and on Monday the President declared that “you cannot negotiate with a terrorist.”

Bush, continuing his hard-line stance at his press conference and in a brief opening statement at the security conference here, said he agreed with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that it would be nice to have a peaceful resolution to the gulf crisis, but “there will be no concession” to Iraq.

The United States is “ratcheting up pressure” on Hussein, he said, and the only way for there to be a peaceful settlement is for the Iraqi leader to comply with existing U.N. resolutions and withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait.

“That is the only way to get a peaceful solution,” he declared, “because it is not going to go on forever, it simply cannot go on forever, it will not go on forever.”

“Well, can there be room for any other view here?” Bush continued. “In a Continent that has suffered so much from aggression and its companion, appeasement? The principles that have given life to CSCE, that have guided our success in Europe, have no geographic limits. Our success here can be neither profound nor enduring if the rule of law is shamelessly disregarded elsewhere.”