Cheney Negotiating U.S. Gulf Role : Military: The defense secretary hopes to get approval for troop exercises and the storage of weapons in the region.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, arriving in the Persian Gulf for the fifth time since Iraq invaded Kuwait last year, opened negotiations Monday to assure a future U.S. military presence in the Saudi kingdom and elsewhere in the Middle East.

En route to the region, where he is to make a four-day swing through six Gulf countries, Cheney said he expects to conclude several agreements “in principle” that would permit U.S. troops to hold exercises on Mideast soil as well as the storing of American weapons in the region. He said the goal is “having the ability to come exercise with them on a regular basis and be able to get back quickly with large forces, should that be required.”

Cheney has said that American forces would want to leave as much as a heavy division’s worth of equipment in warehouses inside Saudi Arabia, and a senior defense official said Monday that the proposals Cheney forwarded in Riyadh were consistent with those he has discussed publicly. He added that weapons sales, including some version of a $14-billion Saudi arms sale, will likely emerge from his trip.

“They do have legitimate security needs,” Cheney said of the Gulf states. “We will be prepared to sell additional equipment as long as we think it’s essential and necessary and primarily defensive in nature.”

Officials traveling with Cheney also said he is carrying a blueprint for U.S. military assistance to the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Members of the council--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar--have long aimed unsuccessfully to form a unified rapid-reaction military force and to coordinate defense policies.

Cheney planned to discuss the U.S. plan, which would involve U.S. training and planning assistance for a common Gulf council force, with Prince Sultan ibn Abdulaziz, defense minister of Saudi Arabia.

A senior defense official traveling with Cheney said that the defense secretary delivered a letter from President Bush to Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, but the official would not disclose its contents.

Cheney’s visit comes as Saudi officials weigh their concern over Saddam Hussein’s continued rule of Iraq against their eagerness to see U.S. forces out of the kingdom.

Reiterating a longstanding Administration position, Cheney emphasized Monday that “we are not interested in permanent stationing of U.S. forces in the Gulf.”

At the same time, Cheney acknowledged that U.S. warplanes could cycle in and out of countries such as Saudi Arabia in such a way that there would be a continual U.S. presence without the trappings of permanent U.S. bases.

Such arrangements are likely to be typical of those negotiated with the publicity-shy Persian Gulf countries in the wake of the war. In the past, those countries’ unwillingness to negotiate open security arrangements with the United States has raised charges that Washington’s Persian Gulf allies wanted firm American commitment but were determined to keep U.S. forces “over the horizon.”

That has now changed, Cheney said Monday en route to Riyadh. At the same time, however, he bowed to regional sensitivities that remain a powerful force for continued secrecy.

“We have to be aware of their sensitivities as we put these arrangements together,” he said. “We are approaching them as allies. We are not in a position, nor do we want to be in a position, of trying to dictate arrangements to anybody.”

But even as the United States deepens its commitment to the Mideast through arrangements for positioning equipment and joint training, Cheney on Monday stopped short of declaring that the United States will enter into formal defense commitments in the Gulf region.

The U.S. strategic interest in Gulf oil is increasing at a time when production is declining elsewhere in the world, Cheney said. But when asked whether the United States would make a NATO-style commitment to Gulf defense, Cheney said that the deployment to Saudi Arabia has shown “everybody in the region, especially our friends, that we are prepared to come to their defense when needed.”

“I think the actions speak louder than words.”