Down Iraqi Copters, Mitchell Urges : Gulf: The Senate leader says none of Saddam Hussein’s aircraft should be allowed to operate against rebels.

Poking at a raw nerve of the Bush Administration, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) insisted Sunday that U.S. forces must shoot down Iraqi helicopters that have been ravaging the rebellious populations of that nation.

Although praising President Bush’s policy of nonintervention in the Iraqi civil wars as correct, Mitchell said: “I wish they would enforce the original policy of not permitting any aircraft, fixed-wing or helicopters, to operate against the rebels.

“That was the Administration policy at the outset,” the Democratic leader added. “Clearly, the exception was apparently permitted for the ferrying of officials, Iraqi government officials, within the country. It’s clear that they are being used far beyond that.”

Mitchell’s plea for action against the helicopters, made on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” came after an anguished and confusing debate within the Bush Administration over Saddam Hussein’s blatant use of the helicopters both to transport troops and to gun down rebels and civilians.

After several weeks of contradictory signals, the White House announced last week that Iraqi helicopters would be shot down only “if they threaten U.S. forces or coalition forces.”

Some critics have reacted to this policy by accusing the Bush Administration of encouraging the overthrow of Hussein and then abandoning the rebels after they heeded the call.

Mitchell, however, did not contest Bush’s overall policy of nonintervention. Instead, the senator simply excluded helicopters from the policy.

“I don’t think the United States can intervene in every internal conflict, however despicable the circumstances,” Mitchell said. In this case, he said the situation is particularly untenable since the Iraqi army, which failed to put up a fight against the U.S.-led coalition, “now appears to be, to some extent, taking it out on their own civilians.”

The embarrassing controversy about the helicopters has billowed from an innocent-seeming agreement at a meeting between the U.S. commander of forces in the Gulf, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and a group of Iraqi commanders in a tent in Iraq a few days after the fighting stopped.

Schwarzkopf ordered the grounding of all Iraqi flights. But the Iraqis asked for an exception for helicopters.

“They looked me straight in the eye,” the general reported in an interview last week, “and said, ‘Well, you know, you have destroyed all of our roads and therefore it’s hard to get around the country. We would like to fly our helicopters . . . for transportation of government officials.”’

Since the request seemed reasonable, Schwarzkopf agreed to it. But he now realizes, he told his interviewer last week, that he was “suckered.”

The quick shooting down of two Iraqi planes by American forces enforced the ban on airplane flights, but the Iraqis have used their helicopters as gunships and troop carriers with impunity.

In mid-March, President Bush told a news conference: “I must confess to some concern about the use of Iraqi helicopters in violation of what our understanding was. . . . These helicopters should not be used for combat purposes inside Iraq.”

Talking with reporters later, he elaborated, telling them that the Iraqis should take his words as a warning: “Do not do this.” But the Administration soon backed away from this warning.

On other issues, Mitchell called for nationwide criminal records to put teeth into anti-gun legislation and, while declaring that he will not be a candidate in 1992, said he does have presidential ambitions.