Won’t Cease Fire, Bush Tells Visitors : Policy: In addition to meeting with a Jewish delegation, the President declares Sunday a national day of prayer.

President Bush told visitors in a private meeting Thursday that he will not authorize a Persian Gulf cease-fire to give Saddam Hussein another chance to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, but he also has no plans to send U.S. ground troops on the offensive any time soon.

According to representatives of American Jewish organizations, who spent an hour with Bush after returning from a five-day trip to Israel, the President described Hussein as “an evil man” whose aggressive behavior must be stopped.

With the war now in its third week, Bush appeared to be devoting much of his time to private and public efforts to maintain support for the Gulf effort, as reports of the first U.S. casualties in ground combat reached communities across the country.

In addition to meeting with the Jewish delegation, the President declared Sunday a national day of prayer.

“I encourage all people of faith to say a special prayer on that day--a prayer for peace; a prayer for the safety of our troops; a prayer for their families; a prayer for the innocents caught up in this war,” Bush said in a speech to the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

The President will take his patriotic appeal to three military bases in North Carolina and Georgia today, making his first out-of-town trip--other than to Camp David, Md.--in nearly two months.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Iraq’s incursion into Saudi Arabia--and the successful battle that expelled the Iraqi troops from the border town of Khafji--would not provoke Bush to launch a ground campaign until the military was ready for such action.

“When we’re ready to move, we’ll move,” Fitzwater said. “If Iraq chooses to make intrusions as they did in the last day or two, we’ll deal with those when they happen.”

That view was echoed in London, where Vice President Dan Quayle, meeting with British Prime Minister John Major, said, “We’re in no hurry to engage in a ground campaign.”

Shoshana Cardin, one of the Jewish leaders who met with Bush, said the President told the group “he is not anxious at this point to enter into a ground war.”

Cardin, president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Bush also said he was opposed to an “intermittent cease-fire--he recalled what happened in Vietnam.”

Although some diplomats have proposed a cease-fire, U.S. officials have expressed concern that interrupting the bombing campaign in Iraq and Kuwait would simply allow the enemy to resupply its front-line troops with impunity, as happened in Vietnam.

Bush met in the family quarters of the White House on Wednesday evening to discuss the war effort with a bipartisan group formed shortly after the Persian Gulf crisis began last August. The group includes members of Congress and officials of previous administrations. The briefing also was attended by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell, and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.

After the session, California Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) said “the air war will continue indefinitely.” As a result of the aerial bombardment, he said, “the Iraqi air force is running away, the Iraqi navy is being sunk and the Iraqi ground forces are being pulverized.”

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) told reporters that the first ground casualties in the Gulf conflict--11 Marines reported killed in the action around Khafji--will not diminish public support for Operation Desert Storm.

“I think it might have the effect of intensifying feeling in the other direction,” Foley said. “I’m just not sure at all that the expansion of casualties will have any effect except to create an element of bitterness on the part of the country, directed at Iraq and Saddam Hussein. If he is counting on that reaction--that casualties will produce withdrawal of support--it’s another miscalculation.”

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. forces would welcome Iraqi ground attacks.

Staff writer Alan C. Miller contributed to this report.