No Price Too High to Oust Iraq--Bush : War threat: He declares in TV interview that the world has faced ‘nothing of this moral importance since World War II.’ He expects to run for reelection in ’92.

Demonstrating no sign of stepping back from his demand that all Iraqi troops must be withdrawn from Kuwait by Jan. 15, now less than two weeks away, President Bush said in an interview scheduled for broadcast tonight that “no price is too heavy to pay” to repel “the aggression of Saddam Hussein against Kuwait.”

Accusing the Iraqi president of committing genocide against the people of Kuwait, Bush said the world has faced “nothing of this moral importance since World War II.”

In the interview, the President also left little doubt that, barring poor health, he intends to run for reelection in 1992.

“In all likelihood, I probably will, but there is no Rubicon crossed on that one. But I would expect so,” he said, although he added: “But who knows? Who knows?”

In economic matters, the President acknowledged that the nation is “in a slowdown, if not recession,” and that “in some areas, we’re clearly in a recession.”

He predicted that any recession would be mild and would last no more than perhaps six to nine months.

“I see no evidence of a deep recession,” he said, adding: “The worst--last--thing we ought to do about it is have a lot of spending programs aimed to ‘put America back to work.’ ”

Bush said also that the problems in the Soviet Union are likely to grow still worse. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s difficulties are growing more complicated, Bush said, and he expressed particular concern about the “deprivation that goes with a brutal, tough winter,” when lack of food, fuel or clothing would increase the political pressure on the crumbling Soviet system.

Soviet citizens, especially those in urban areas, are facing an acute shortage of food and other consumer essentials because an economy edging indecisively toward reform has all but collapsed. Gorbachev also is struggling to hold the Soviet Union together in the face of nationalist pressures from many of its various peoples, even as a tug of war continues between radical reformers and hard-line Communists.

The interview was conducted at the White House on Dec. 16 by British television personality David Frost. It is scheduled to be aired on television stations of the Public Broadcasting Service and on the National Public Radio network tonight.

The hourlong interview offers a portrait of Bush determined to send no signals of compromise or concession to Hussein, whose forces invaded and occupied Kuwait on Aug. 2. Now Bush and Hussein face the prospects of unleashing their massive forces, separated by the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where U.S. troops have been deployed in increasingly massive numbers for nearly five months. The United States is building a force of 430,000 troops in the region, and the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq are said to number about half a million.

Like many of the President’s other public statements and those, private as well as public, made by his most senior advisers, those in the interview become yet one more piece in the unyielding message that the Administration is trying to send to Hussein in hopes that it can persuade him that he has no choice but to retreat.

After a 12-day holiday at Camp David, Md., the President returned to the White House on Tuesday afternoon, facing a busy and tense period leading up to Jan. 15, the deadline set by the U.N. Security Council for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face the threat of military action by a U.S.-led international coalition assembled in the gulf.

Bush is scheduled to meet today with Vice President Dan Quayle, who spent the New Year’s holiday in Saudi Arabia visiting U.S. troops, and on Thursday with congressional leaders on whose support he is counting to keep the House and Senate from passing measures restricting his opportunities to act, or demonstrating political divisions over his gulf policy.

In addition, the President is likely to send Secretary of State James A. Baker III on a visit to the Persian Gulf region in coming days to consult with allied leaders, Administration officials have said. Such a journey would put Baker in place to make a quick side trip to Baghdad or some other point to meet with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz or Hussein if the current deadlock over the timing of a visit can be overcome.

Shortly after returning to Washington, Bush met at the White House with his key advisers--Baker; Defense Secretary Dick Cheney; Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

“It’s a chance to have a private status review before we begin the new year,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said of the meeting. “It’s routine in that it’s not to make any new decisions but to review the situation.”

Fitzwater also reported that the President spoke with Gorbachev by telephone on New Year’s Day, and in recent days with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, French President Francois Mitterrand, Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In the interview, Bush said the U.N. resolutions calling for Iraq’s departure from Kuwait and restoration of the Kuwaiti government must be met “to a ‘T.’ ”

What if Hussein were to promise a withdrawal, actually begin to withdraw or decide to give up all the territory he has seized save for two strategic islands, Bubiyan and Warba, in the gulf on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, or the Rumaila oil field straddling the two countries?

“Certainly it’s not acceptable to have some condition,” Bush said. “The United Nations resolution says ‘out’ by Jan. 15. So halfway withdrawals, or well, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ excuses--that’s not good enough.”

The President also made it clear, as he has in the past, that Hussein must meet the United Nations’ call for some form of reparations to restore Kuwait to its pre-invasion condition.

Bush said he has not decided whether to launch an attack to force Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. But he made clear his intention to open any conflict with a punishing aerial attack intended to destroy Hussein’s air force and aerial defenses.

“He would not have air cover of any kind, should there be some conflagration. None, none at all,” Bush said.

“He doesn’t know what he’s up against. He doesn’t believe the willpower of the United States or the United Kingdom or France or Egypt or the Saudi Arabians to use that power against him. So we click right on down to a deadline,” the President said.

Bush spoke at length of a report from Amnesty International, the human rights organization, that Iraqi forces have tortured and raped Kuwaitis: “The torturing of a handicapped child. The shooting of young boys in front of their parents. The rape of women dragged out of the home . . . the tying of those that are being tortured to ceiling fans so they turn and turn.”

Asked whether the attacks amounted to genocide, the systematic extermination of a people or nation, Bush said: “It is. It’s a deliberate wiping them out . . . a brutality that is close to unprecedented in history.

“Standing up against this aggression--no price is too heavy to pay for it . . . ,” he said.

At another point in the interview, he said, “If we don’t do something about it today, we’re going to live to pay a much greater price tomorrow.”

He defended the emergency airlift of troops to Saudi Arabia within a week of the invasion, saying of Hussein: “I am convinced that he would have tried to take over Dhahran and the oil fields in Saudi Arabia.”

In the interview, which ranged over domestic and social issues, as well as foreign policy in general and the gulf in particular, Bush acknowledged that the West was slow to recognize a danger from Hussein.