Baker Says Coalition Is Firm, Ready : Diplomacy: The secretary winds up his visits with anti-Iraq alliance leaders to assess and bolster their resolve.

Nearing the end of a nine-day trip through 11 countries, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Sunday that the military forces facing Iraq are ready to fight as the Tuesday deadline approaches.

“I’m very pleased with the conversations I’ve had,” Baker told reporters aboard his airliner on the flight from Ankara, Turkey, to this Royal Air Force base, where he met with British Prime Minister John Major.

“It seems to me that the international coalition is well prepared politically, economically and militarily for any eventuality as we move toward midnight Jan. 15,” he said.

Baker’s comments echoed remarks by President Bush and other Administration officials Sunday.

“I say we’ve got to do what we have to do,” the President told reporters during a brief press conference at the White House dominated by talk of the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania. If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein tries to hold on to Kuwait, he would be “making a tremendous mistake,” Bush said.

Bush planned to meet with his top national security advisers Sunday evening at the White House, a meeting that has become a Sunday evening ritual during the five-plus months of the gulf crisis.

And while top officials insist there is still a chance that Hussein might withdraw from Kuwait and back away from war, the mood of the Administration appears increasingly grim.

“If you look at the record so far, you have to be pessimistic,” National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said in a television interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

As officials make the final round of consultations and preparations that would be needed to begin a war, Baker and Major met in the base operations building at Alconbury, near the prime minister’s official country residence at Chequers. The two compared notes on the Persian Gulf crisis in which London has emerged as Washington’s closest ally, refurbishing the “special relationship” which last year had been showing signs of strain.

Since his unsuccessful talks last Wednesday with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, Baker has crisscrossed the Middle East to confer with--and massage the egos of--leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Syria and Turkey before starting home by way of Britain. The purpose of the frenetic exercise seems to be to touch base with all of the major participants in the anti-Iraq coalition in advance of the decision on whether to go to war.

Plagued by thick fog in Ankara, the Baker entourage fell increasingly behind schedule. Baker now plans to confer with Canadian leaders today in Ottawa, a meeting he had hoped to hold late Sunday.

Baker’s Sunday meeting with President Turgut Ozal and other Turkish officials started almost four hours late because his aircraft was unable to land at Ankara airport Saturday night because of dense fog. The party was diverted to Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey and was unable to get to Ankara until Sunday afternoon. That delayed the Major meeting by more than three hours and made it impossible for Baker to reach Ottawa before midnight.

A senior Bush Administration official aboard Baker’s aircraft said that the unfolding Soviet repression in Lithuania and other independence-minded republics would not undermine the unity of the Persian Gulf coalition, although it may severely damage U.S.-Soviet relations.

He said that Hussein would be making a mistake to assume that U.S.-Soviet friction would allow him to safely ignore the U.N. Security Council’s Tuesday deadline for him to pull his forces out of Kuwait.

“I do not think that the events in the Baltics will change (Hussein’s) calculus, particularly when the Soviet Union is making it clear that it is staying in the international coalition in the gulf,” the official said.

The official, who declined to be identified by name, said that all nations--with the possible exception of Syria--that have sent ground forces to Saudi Arabia are prepared to follow President Bush’s lead if and when he orders a military offensive to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh said Saturday that the Damascus regime sent its forces to Saudi Arabia “for defensive purposes only.” He said his government is now consulting with its Arab allies to determine whether it would participate in offensive operations.

The Administration official said he knew of no other ground force that might balk at a U.S. decision to advance. He suggested that some nations with token naval or air units might decline to follow the U.S. lead.

Times staff writer David Lauter, in Washington, contributed to this story.