Iraq Shows Off Seven as POWs : 9 Scud Missiles Aimed at Saudi Arabia Shot Down : Gulf War: Three from U.S. are among allied fliers reportedly shown in Baghdad. Gen. Schwarzkopf says forces may have knocked out Iraqi nuclear capability.

Iraqi television, offering the first official reports of American prisoners of war, displayed seven uniformed men Sunday--among them three Americans--whom it identified as captured allied fliers.

Speaking in halting and exhausted tones, the captured men sent messages of reassurance to their families. Several captives also made brief anti-war statements in stilted language that implied that they may have been coerced into reading scripts.

Meanwhile, U.S. Patriot missiles downed nine more Iraqi Scud missiles, including five fired toward the American base at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and four aimed at Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the Pentagon announced.

And as the massive allied bombardment of Iraq and occupied Kuwait continued, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of U.S. forces, who appeared Sunday in television interviews on each of the major networks, declared that the allied forces may have achieved one prime objective--destroying Iraq’s nuclear and chemical warfare programs.

In other developments as the Gulf War moved into its fifth day:

* U.S. military officials said that as of Sunday evening, one American flier had been killed and 12 others were considered missing in action in the air war over Iraq and Kuwait.

* Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger arrived in Israel for meetings with Israeli officials aimed at reassuring the Israeli government that it can count on continued U.S. support and to plead for continued Israeli restraint in the Gulf conflict.

* Finance ministers and central bankers from the United States and six other leading industrial nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan--met to discuss a U.S. request that the allies contribute more in financial aid for the war effort.

* The Army announced it is calling up about 20,000 members of the Individual Ready Reserve--mostly medical personnel, truck drivers, mechanics, supply specialists and artillery personnel--to join forces in the gulf. They must report by Jan. 31 for up to one year.

* Iraq said 40 of its civilians and 31 of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting thus far, with 150 civilians and 51 soldiers wounded. Also Sunday, leaders of Iraq’s dissident Kurdish population said through spokesmen in Paris that some of the allied bombing raids have struck military bases and cities in northern Iraq, killing several hundred civilians.

Expanding on the reports of U.S. casualties, U.S. officials said four other American soldiers have been killed in non-combat-related accidents since the war began Wednesday night.

Britain lists six of its fliers as missing, Italy and Saudi Arabia both report two missing fliers and Kuwait reports one.

Overall, the allied forces report having lost 16 planes--14 as a result of Iraqi groundfire and two for other reasons--including eight American planes shot down and one American plane that crashed after a mechanical failure. Iraq, however, claims to have shot down 154 attacking planes, a claim Schwarzkopf dismissed Sunday as “ridiculous.”

U.S. officials have reported downing 15 Iraqi planes, destroying an unknown number of other on the ground and capturing a total of 23 Iraqi soldiers in an operation against several oil platforms in the Persian Gulf, from which the Iraqis had been firing at aircraft.

Lt. Col. Greg Pepin, who briefed reporters in Riyadh, said that five Iraqis were killed in that operation Saturday and that four others were wounded. Most of the POWs were plucked from rubber liferafts, Pepin said. He did not give any details about how the five were killed.

The POWs

The three Americans cited by Iraqi radio as POWs identified themselves as Marine Lt. Col. Clifford Acree of Oceanside, Marine Chief Warrant Officer Guy Hunter of Camp Pendleton and Navy Lt. Jeffrey Norton Zaun, from Cherry Hill, N.J.

Pentagon officials said they had no independent confirmation that the men displayed on the Iraqi television broadcast were, in fact, allied POWs, but Schwarzkopf and other top officials said they thought it “likely” that Iraq has captured at least some fliers. And relatives of some of the men said they recognized the voices they heard when CNN rebroadcast the audio portion of the Iraqi transmission.

“I hope they did get to the ground and are alive,” Schwarzkopf said. “I’d much rather see that than see them dead.” A British Defense Ministry spokesman in London said his government had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate Iraq’s claims.

The seven allied captives who appeared on the Iraqi television broadcast appeared exhausted and “subdued,” according to CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, the only American journalist still in Baghdad. Two of the men appeared to have bruised faces, one had a bandaged hand, Arnett said, in a broadcast from Baghdad that was subject to Iraqi censorship.

Earlier in the day, Iraqi television had shown pictures of two men, blindfolded, being paraded down a street. The TV images were broadcast only within Iraq, but they were described by Arnett.

In the audio portion of the interview with the seven POWs, which CNN broadcast in the United States, several of the voices sounded weak, at times barely audible.

Each of the captives--three Americans, two Britons, an Italian and a Kuwaiti--identified himself and stated the unit he had come from.

Acree sent a message to his family that “I am alive and well.” Hunter, similarly, said “to my wife and children: I miss you very much” and asked his children to “study hard in school.” Acree and Hunter had been flying together in a Marine OV-10 Bronco, a night surveillance airplane.

Hunter, Zaun and some of the non-American captives also made anti-war statements. “I condemn this aggression against peaceful Iraq,” Hunter said. “I think our leaders and our people have wrongly attacked the peaceful people of Iraq,” said Zaun.

Similarly, two of the non-American captives made statements against the war. One flier identified as Capt. Maurizio Cocciolone of the Italian air force said, “The war is a bad thing. . . .” And British Lt. Adrian John Nichols said “I think this war should be stopped.”

The State Department on Sunday strongly protested the treatment of the captives and noted that mistreatment of prisoners of war is a war crime. One provision of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 protects POWs against “insults and public curiosity.”

But with unnatural pauses between words and stilted pronunciation, the men seemed to be indicating that they were being forced to read scripted statements.

“We must assume these men were physically mistreated,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who spent 5 1/2 years as a POW in Vietnam. They are trained to “give their name, rank, birth date and resist to the best of their ability,” McCain said.

The Iraqi broadcast may have been primarily for domestic consumption. With allied forces mounting intense search and rescue missions for downed fliers, the Iraqi regime’s official daily newspaper, Al Thawra, on Sunday offered in a front-page story rewards of up to $32,000 for any Iraqi who captures an allied pilot alive and turns him over to authorities. The broadcast Sunday night may have been designed as an incentive for prospective bounty hunters.

But how wide an audience the Iraqi broadcast may have received is unclear. U.S. officials noted that electric power has been knocked out in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities. And international satellite and microwave facilities that Iraq used to transmit its signals to the outside world have also been destroyed.

A source who works for state-run television in neighboring Jordan, which supports Iraq in the war, said technicians have been working overtime to establish a microwave link with Iraqi television that would enable Jordan to rebroadcast Iraqi signals. But, so far, they have been unsuccessful.

The Missiles

But even as the Iraqi broadcast began to focus American attention on the safety of POWs, the Iraqi missile barrages directed at Dhahran and Riyadh came as a sharp reminder of an earlier issue--Iraq’s elusive mobile Scud missile launchers.

According to Schwarzkopf, U.S. forces so far may have destroyed as many as 16 of the mobile launchers. But, he added, officials cannot be certain how many the Iraqis have left.

“The numbers have jumped around so much on that that I think it’s almost impossible to predict,” Schwarzkopf said. U.S. analysts who briefed members of Congress on Friday said they thought the Iraqis had begun the war with roughly 30 of the truck-like launchers. But a PLO official was quoted in a Beirut newspaper as saying that Iraq has 140 mobile missile launchers hidden underground. And Iraq’s charge d’affaires in Beirut, Hakmay Khoedir, said rockets would be launched at Israel as long as the war against Iraq lasts.

So far, U.S. Patriot anti-missile batteries have proven highly successful in downing the Scuds. The Patriots downed nine missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia on Sunday, military officials said. Lt. Col. Mike Gallagher, an Army spokesman in Riyadh, said a tenth missile landed in the waters off Dhahran and was not shot at.

Finding and destroying the launchers remains a “high priority” target, Schwarzkopf said.

The Targets

Two other high-priority targets have been Iraq’s nuclear and chemical facilities and its command and control network, and U.S. officials reported substantial progress in destroying both.

U.S. analysts believe Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is most likely “alive and he’s operating from areas among civilians,” Schwarzkopf said. But, he added, “a lot” of Hussein’s forces “are not getting orders” from Baghdad. “A lot of them are asking for orders and a lot of things aren’t happening out there that normally would be happening if they were getting orders.”

There is evidence that the Iraqi leader may have had to use messengers to order the firing of missiles at Tel Aviv and Dhahran last week, a Saudi official said.

The destruction of Iraqi communications, however, reduces, at least for now, the number of Iraqi soldiers who defect, Schwarzkopf said.

“I doubt if many of the troops in the front lines know what’s going on in downtown Baghdad or throughout Iraq,” he said, adding that allied forces have begun psychological warfare operations designed to persuade Iraqi soldiers to give up and to reassure them that they will not be harmed if they do so.

As for Iraq’s nuclear facilities, Schwarzkopf said he has “very high confidence that those nuclear reactors (in Iraq) have been thoroughly damaged and will not be effective for quite some number of years.”

“We’ve gone after his nuclear capability, his chemical capability and his biological capability,” Schwarzkopf said. “I can assure you that it’s had a considerable setback, if not a total setback by this point in the game.”

Iraq’s air power has been similarly damaged, although the vast majority of its planes remain intact in hardened shelters.

The Saudi official and a British military official both said allied forces are not overly concerned about Iraq’s large number of remaining aircraft because so many of the country’s runways have been destroyed--80% of the airfields in southern Iraq, in the Saudi official’s estimate. In addition, Schwarzkopf said much of the Iraqi air control radar system has been destroyed.

With the majority of the runways in the south already unusable, the Saudi official added, allied forces have begun moving against runways in the north from bases in Turkey.

“They cannot take off. Their runways are gone. It’s no good having your aircraft in bunkers if you can’t put them up. They are denied that capability,” he said.

American, British and Saudi pilots for the past two days have reported that while substantial anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles continue to be deployed against them, albeit often poorly aimed, very few Iraqi aircraft have attempted to intercept them.

“For us, it is kind of boring. We have not encountered any air threat,” said a Saudi fighter pilot, Lt. Col. Bandar ibn Abdullah. “We have achieved air superiority, and that is indicated by the fact that we have not encountered any aircraft.”

“It’s a movable feast,” added the British military official.

Times staff writers Melissa Healy in Washington, Kim Murphy in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Mark Fineman in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

Targeting Iraq

About 90 hours into Desert Storm, U.S. and allied aircraft had flown more than 7,000 sorties; for three days, the coalition has flown 2,000 sorties a day. Sixteen U.S. and allied aircraft have been lost so far.

The air assault has targeted a number of key industrial and military sites. Among those believed to have been struck so far:

Mansur: Electronics production.

Badush: Chemical, possibly biological weapons.

Al Anbar: Primary launch facility for missile research and development.

Project 395: Missile development.

Musayyib: Production of chemicals for chemical weapons.

Al Iskandriyah: Chemical weapons assembly plant, part of restricted military production zone.

Tajl: Weapons production, 105mm and 203mm cannons.

Baiji: Production of chemicals for chemical weapons.

Saad 16: Missiles, chemical weapons and nuclear materials.

Salman Pak: Biological weapons, possible chemical weapons.

Al Qaim: Uranium processing, possible chemical weapons.

Baghdad: Biological weapons.

Tawaitha: Nuclear material.

Irbil: Nuclear testing.

Akashat: Chemical weapons.

Al Dour/Saad 13: Military electronics.

H-2: Missile site.

H-3: Aircraft and staging area of troops.

Samarra: Chemical and biological weapons.

Al Fallujah: Chemical weapons.

Also reportedly undergoing heavy bombing from U.S. and allied forces: Tikrit: Saddam Hussein’s hometown and military base site.

Republican Guards: Elite troops positioned near Kuwaiti border.

Scuds: Suspected site of mobile missile launchers.

LOST IN THE DESERT

An Air Force F-4G Wild Weasel was downed by mechnical failure in the Saudi desert over the weekend. The two crew members were rescued and returned to base. But what happens when a plane is lost behind enemy lines: * Planes in combat usually work in pairs, so when one pilot ejects, he will be watched by his wingman. The wingman won’t fly circles around the downed crewman--which would pinpoint location for enemy observers--but will sweep figure eights to help radar-equipped AWACs fix his location.

* Crew members also are equipped with homing devices. Maps, compasses, flares and first-aid kits also are among their supplies.

* Air crews are taught how to survive in the desert and elude the enemy.

* All crew members fall to earth with supplies, including enough water for three days, concentrated foods and sweets. They also have a system for collecting water from the desert by condensation when the temperature falls at night.