Baker Trip to Gulf Called Likely Soon : Diplomacy: Visits with allies before the Jan. 15 deadline would put him close to Iraq for possible talks. European Community may send an envoy to Baghdad.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III probably will visit the Persian Gulf area to confer with U.S. allies sometime before the Jan. 15 deadline set by the United Nations for Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait, Administration officials said Monday.

A senior State Department official said such a trip is a “live possibility,” although no decisions have been made as yet.

A Baker trip to Saudi Arabia would put him relatively close to Baghdad, permitting him to visit the Iraqi capital on short notice if the United States and Iraq end their diplomatic stalemate and agree to a date for talks between Baker and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

However, unless agreement is reached on a Baker visit to Baghdad, the primary purpose of his trip to the gulf would be to confer with U.S. allies about military and political strategy for dealing with Iraq should that country fail to withdraw its troops.

Meanwhile, foreign ministers of the European Community agreed to meet Friday to consider a proposal to send a European mission to Baghdad, and some European reports said Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz might be invited to attend the meeting. If the Europeans decide to act, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos would go to the Iraqi capital.

In other Persian Gulf developments Monday:

* The Iraqi government dropped the draft age by one year, ordering 17-year-olds into military service for the Persian Gulf crisis.

* Vice President Dan Quayle, visiting American troops in Saudi Arabia, assured his audience that the United States has no intention of letting the standoff with Iraq turn into another Vietnam.

* A senior Iraqi official expressed his country’s desire to reach a compromise leading toward direct talks with the United States.

Foreign Minister Poos would be designated as the Europeans’ point man in talks with the Baghdad government because, under a system of semi-annual rotations, Luxembourg holds the presidency of the European Community for the first six months of this year.

Poos was quoted by news agencies as saying that if he goes to Baghdad, he would not attempt to cut a deal with Hussein but would only repeat Western demands for Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait.

“There is a condition . . . to talks, which is compliance with the U.N. resolutions,” he said. “No partial solution is possible--also no new deal.”

If Poos sticks with that position, U.S. officials would welcome such a trip.

Baker told reporters during a recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization foreign ministers’ meeting that he endorses the idea of European contact with Iraq, provided that it conveys the same hard-line message that the United States wants to send.

“We support all diplomatic efforts to try to resolve this crisis peacefully and politically,” Baker said. “And we are very heartened by the uniform message which has been going out . . . from the international community to Iraq with respect to its aggression.”

A State Department official said Monday that there has been no break in the U.S.-Iraq deadlock over dates for a Baker trip to Baghdad. The United States wants the visit to take place before Thursday, while Iraq has proposed Jan. 12.

The Senior State Department official said Baker, spending the New Year’s holiday at his home in Houston, has not yet focused on the proposals that he visit Saudi Arabia and possibly other gulf states, so no final decisions have been made regarding a trip.

In Iraq, the conscription of 17-year-olds, announced by Baghdad Radio, marked the fourth major military call-up since Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2. Earlier this month, the top end of the draft was raised to 33-year-olds.

The announcement by the military’s General Mobilization Headquarters said the new recruits--all Iraqi males born in 1973--were instructed to report to draft centers beginning Wednesday. Any 17-year-old who fails to report by Jan. 10 would be subject to legal action, the announcement warned.

The young recruits will be trained for the regular army, which forms the vast majority of Baghdad’s defenders on the Kuwait front facing the American-dominated forces deployed in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Men over the age of 33 have been mobilized in the Popular Army, a lightly trained militia that includes students and members of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party, many of them desk-bound bureaucrats.

Past Iraqi military call-ups, including those of reservists who fought the long, brutal war with Iran in the 1980s, have been unpopular in the streets of Baghdad, where the prospect of a new war has angered families--many of whom lost sons in that earlier war--who are just now putting their lives together.

Even before Monday’s decision to lower the recruitment age, draft dodging had become a problem for Saddam Hussein’s regime, and military press gangs reportedly roamed the capital looking for draft evaders and soldiers who were absent without leave.

But Hussein has answered every buildup of the Western forces and their Arab allies with increases in his own military. In mid-November, responding to Bush’s decision to boost American forces in the gulf region by 200,000 troops, Hussein announced that he would increase his forces in the Kuwait theater by 250,000 men--seven regular divisions, most from the Iranian border area, and 150,000 reservists.

Meanwhile, a senior Iraqi official, referring to the deadlock over dates for a Baker visit, said, “Iraq would be ready to receive any new proposal from the United States on date-fixing,” the Washington Post reported from Baghdad. “We’ve kept the door open for whenever they want to reconsider their position.”

However, the senior Iraqi official accused the United States of blocking what Iraq regards as the most workable diplomatic initiative under way, that of Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid. He said Saudi Arabia had indicated a strong willingness to hold direct talks with Iraq concerning the gulf crisis until the United States intervened at the outset of Bendjedid’s initiative to prevent Saudi participation.

On the diplomatic front, Baghdad’s strategy since September has focused on splitting the Europeans from the hard American stand on resolution of the gulf crisis. Hussein’s government has heaped praise on any country that indicated support for his formula of tying a solution of the Kuwait issue to longstanding Middle East political dilemmas such as the Palestinian problem.

France, for instance, has been a particular target of Iraqi diplomacy since President Francois Mitterrand, in a September address to the U.N. General Assembly, appeared to favor some sort of linkage. However, France, which has contributed troops, planes and ships to the Western force in the gulf, has denied that it insists on simultaneous solutions to all the problems in the region.

Arab peacemaking efforts were marked by reports in Amman that Jordan’s King Hussein would begin another round of consultations in European capitals this week.

In Baghdad, the government line remains a mixture of defiance, exemplified by the conscription announcement, and readiness to seek a peaceful solution on Iraqi terms, meaning no unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait.

President Hussein, in a televised New Year’s message on Sunday, condemned his enemies, saying:

“In this confrontation, there have been those who betrayed Jesus Christ and who betrayed the principles and values of Islam, one luring and leading the other. May God curse them all.”

He made no mention of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

Kempster reported from Washington and Williams from Amman, Jordan. Times staff writer David Lauter, in Washington, also contributed to this story.