Kuwait Looks to Neighbors for Security : Persian Gulf: Faced with a pullout of U.S. troops, the emirate will likely opt for a mix of a U.S. naval presence and friendly Arab forces.

Rebuffed in its request for a long-term U.S. troop presence inside its borders, Kuwait is prepared to consider an alternative plan to deploy 25,000 or more troops from Egypt, Syria and the six Persian Gulf countries, according to government officials and diplomats in the Kuwaiti capital.

Foreign ministers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council will meet here today to consider proposals for ensuring the future security of the Gulf region. They are likely to move toward a plan that relies on an expanded U.S. naval, equipment and training presence in the Gulf but depends on Arab forces for ground deployment, the officials said.

“The Americans think it’s better if they stay less visible,” said Abdullah Bishara, secretary general of the GCC. Britain, in meetings with GCC officials last week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, also ruled out the possibility of a long-term British presence in the region, he said.

Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, said last month that Kuwait would seek a long-term deployment of coalition forces in Kuwait, as long as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein remains a threat to the security of the emirate. Diplomats here said Kuwait had proposed a symbolic U.S. force of perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 troops.

However, U.S. officials have made it clear that American forces are likely to be withdrawn from Kuwait within the next six months, as the situation in southern Iraq stabilizes with the deployment of a U.N. observer force along the Iraq-Kuwait border. U.S. forces are scheduled to pull out of a southern Iraq buffer zone sometime this week, according to the United Nations.

“The problem right now in this area is that the Kuwaitis are scared about Saddam, no matter how much we say to them about how we destroyed (Iraq’s) military capability,” said one Western diplomat. “He’s proven he had enough military force to take both the Shia and the Kurds out, and they probably here believe that both the Shia and the Kurds were stronger than they are.”

Based on an agreement signed in Damascus in March between the Gulf countries and their two primary Arab allies during the crisis, Egypt and Syria, the GCC ministers will consider a proposal to use U.N. observers as a front-line shield along the Iraqi border, flanked by Kuwaiti forces, then troops from the GCC’s 10,000-man Peninsula Shield force, and finally, just north of Kuwait city, Egyptian and Syrian troops.

Bishara said the precise size of the contingent has not been determined, though he favors expanding the size of the GCC force and deploying perhaps 10,000 Egyptian troops and 5,000 Syrians.

Western allies would be expected to maintain a strong naval presence in the Gulf and increase their combat and technical training missions and joint military exercises in the region, Bishara said.

“The intention of the policy is to globalize the security of the Gulf, to give it an international dimension,” he said. “But the challenge of the future is the establishment of a credible GCC force, and this is an issue we are grappling with under very strong pressure and against impossible odds,” primarily the lack of trained manpower and the GCC’s historic orientation as merely a deterrent force, he said.

The foreign ministers will discuss how the costs of deployment in Kuwait will be split and whether the force should be under the command of Kuwaiti military authorities or of Saudi Lt. Gen. Khalid ibn Sultan, commander of the joint Arab forces during Operation Desert Storm.

Also undetermined will be what role Iran will play in future security arrangements for the Gulf. Moving rapidly in recent months to improve its relations with the GCC countries, Iran has made it clear that it would like to become a partner to any long-term defense arrangements.

But Arab Gulf officials, who over the past decade sided with Iraq in its war against non-Arab Iran and battled Iranian efforts to export its Islamic revolution, are wary of moving too quickly.

The Gulf countries have been cautiously receptive to Iran’s overtures but are not entirely ready to forgive and forget. “Without the Iranian rhetoric, the invasion (of Kuwait) would never have taken place,” Bishara said. But he added that “all the signals are promising” toward at least some improvement in ties between the two sides of the Gulf.

Along with the deployment plan, the GCC ministers will also discuss details of a $10-billion aid program to be funded by the wealthy Gulf countries to assist poorer Arab neighbors, especially Egypt and Syria, which suffered substantial financial setbacks as a result of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.