U.S. Asks NATO to Help Ferry Troops

The United States made an “urgent” appeal today to its NATO allies to help ferry U.S. soldiers and equipment to the Persian Gulf region, officials said.

The pitch for help from North Atlantic Treaty Organization members in ferrying troops to the gulf was made by NATO envoy William H. Taft IV at the Brussels headquarters of the alliance, officials said.

European allies have already provided some troop-transport assistance, but the new request centered on the need for passenger planes, said a U.S. official at the NATO mission, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There are about 230,000 American troops in the gulf region now; 200,000 more are to arrive in coming weeks.

The U.N. Security Council will probably meet next week on a resolution allowing force against Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said today.

“Soon, probably next week, the Security Council will consider a draft resolution authorizing member states to use force to bring about the reversal of the Iraqi aggression,” he told reporters in London. It was the first indication that enough support had been gathered to call the meeting before the end of the month.

The urgency is due in large part to the fact that Yemen, which has tilted toward Iraq in the past, takes over the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council from the United States in December.

China and the Soviet Union were said today to be in favor of a political solution to the gulf crisis, implying that they are not yet ready to back a U.N. resolution on the use of force.

“Both sides stand for a political solution to the gulf crisis on the basis of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions,” the official New China News Agency said after talks between the two countries’ foreign ministers.

Iraq, underscoring its readiness to fight to keep Kuwait, began calling up battle-hardened military reservists today. It also lifted a curfew in the conquered emirate, insisting “normal life” is resuming--and implying that the Kuwaiti resistance has been beaten down.

The latest Iraqi call-up, announced in a Defense Ministry communique broadcast on Baghdad radio, involves reservists in their 30s, including battle-tested veterans of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

They apparently will be among 150,000 reservists and draftees that Iraq said earlier this week will be sent to Kuwait, along with about 100,000 other regular army troops.

Iraq’s official news agency said it was canceling an overnight curfew in Kuwait because the emirate is calmer now. The news agency, monitored in Nicosia, Cyprus, said the move was meant to “confirm the return of normal life” to Kuwait, which Iraq has declared to be an Iraqi province.