White House Dampens Idea of Special Session : Congress: Many lawmakers are also reluctant to take up the issue of authorization of U.S. force.

With congressional support starting to fragment, the White House worked Thursday to cool sentiment for a special session of Congress to consider whether to specifically authorize--or possibly discourage--the use of U.S. military force in the Persian Gulf.

“I have no plans right now to call them back,” President Bush said in a television interview when asked whether he would order Congress back into session.

Bush, who met Wednesday and Thursday with senior congressional leaders, will confer again today with a wider group of top House and Senate Democrats and Republicans to review developments in the gulf and to discuss whether a special session of Congress should be called.

But, exhibiting a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the idea, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that while Bush is “willing to consult” with leading lawmakers about a pre-Christmas special session, the President is not “actively considering” one.

Similarly, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said after a private lunch with Bush and House Republican leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) that the President gave “no indication he has any plans” to call Congress into session.

Foley and Michel made it clear that, despite renewed calls by some Republican senators for a special session, most congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle still share Bush’s reservations about the idea. “The Speaker is not eager to call back the 101st Congress to debate the gulf crisis, and he made that very clear to the President,” a Foley aide said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dan Quayle argued strongly against waiting too long before using force in the gulf.

“Even as we exercise patience and restraint, we must also be alert to the moral costs of such a course,” he said in a speech at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. “The longer we refrain from action against Iraq, the more time Saddam Hussein has to tighten his grip on Kuwait, and the harder it may be to break that grip, if and when war comes. . . .

“I believe that every reasonable effort must be made to resolve this crisis peacefully. I also think that there must be limits to our patience, and those limits are reached when our restraint threatens to undermine other, equally moral goals,” Quayle said.

The impetus for convening what would be the first special session of Congress since 1948, when President Harry S. Truman summoned lawmakers back from their winter break to debate the Marshall Plan, came from a small but influential group of Republican senators. They include Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lugar, who saw Bush on Wednesday with Dole, said that the President “would like to have a special session,” provided he can agree with congressional leaders beforehand on the scope and duration of the debate and on the final resolution to be passed.

However, Bush’s lukewarm comments, coming only a day after the meeting with the Republican senators, suggested that the President may have already concluded that he would not get the resolution he wants.

A special session would present a wide range of problems, not only for the White House but for members of Congress.

With the public mood shifting and initial support for the deployment--as demonstrated by public opinion surveys--slipping to some extent, members of the House and Senate have wavered in their support for the President’s policies.

Mindful of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that President Lyndon B. Johnson used as a congressional go-ahead for a massive U.S. buildup in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, some lawmakers are wary of an open-ended measure that would authorize the use of force. Their fear is that the vote could come back to haunt them politically if the military operation goes awry.

From the Administration’s standpoint, a special session could open a Pandora’s box of congressional resolutions and other measures that would tie the President’s hands and limit his use of the armed forces, rather than giving him the vote of confidence he would seek.

Dole and Lugar floated the idea of a special session two weeks ago, arguing that lawmakers should send a clear message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that Congress and the American people are united behind Bush and will support any action he takes to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

With that support starting to crumble, they renewed their calls for a special session Wednesday in the belief that Bush is at a “now-or-never” crossroads with Congress, aides said.

Bush’s Persian Gulf policies have come under sharp attack in Senate Armed Services Committee hearings. Democratic lawmakers, emboldened by the criticism voiced by a parade of former Cabinet officials and military experts, already are talking about an alternative resolution that would restrain Bush from using force until sanctions have been given at least a year to work.

Echoing the criticism expressed by two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former Navy Secretary James H. Webb Jr. told the Armed Services Committee on Thursday that going to war with Iraq now would be a mistake. He said that a military offensive could set in motion a series of upheavals that would probably end in another Arab-Israeli war and the re-emergence of Iran and Syria as the region’s major powers.

Suggesting that the U.S. military would not be able to sustain a deployment as large as the one in the gulf for an indefinite time, Webb sharply criticized Bush’s recent decision to send another 200,000 troops to Saudi Arabia.

“The President has placed himself--and our troops--in a doubly unfortunate situation,” Webb said. The 400,000 troops being deployed to the gulf cannot be maintained or rotated “without reducing the size of the commitment,” which could be perceived as “backing down” before Iraq has withdrawn from Kuwait, Webb said.

At the same time, without troop rotations that commitment cannot be maintained indefinitely at its present level, adding to the pressure to go to war, he said.

Webb said that while he does not believe that Bush should compound his “mistake in sending so many troops . . . by a further error in using them in a premature offensive,” the President should call for reinstatement of the draft and seek a declaration of war from Congress if he plans to go to war in the gulf.