U.S.-Gulf Security Ties: Details Won’t Be Told : Middle East: Agreements will reportedly be concluded soon. But Arab leaders want no publicity.

The Bush Administration “in the next few months” will finalize agreements to secure Persian Gulf arms warehouses, base access for U.S. forces and joint exercise rights following a round of secretive talks here this week, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Thursday.

But Cheney said that most of the agreements to be worked out will remain secret, owing to the sensitivities of Gulf leaders.

Throughout the area, the U.S. role in the war against Iraq has forged “a broad agreement” on new security arrangements with Washington, Cheney declared as he completed a four-day tour of six Persian Gulf countries.

While many Persian Gulf countries “were very reluctant to have us around” before the invasion of Kuwait, Cheney said, U.S. actions in the Gulf have softened traditional resistance. In each country he visited, “the reception was positive” to the Bush Administration’s initiatives, Cheney said.

Cheney held meetings with senior officials of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.

But the defense secretary, discussing the fruits of his visits on his way back to Washington, bowed to regional sensitivities and refused even to acknowledge that he had reached tentative security agreements with Gulf countries.

“It’s still the Middle East,” said Cheney. “Therefore, a certain amount of discretion is required in terms of what you say publicly about arrangements in any given locale.”

Cheney’s comments followed a 90-minute meeting earlier Thursday with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, who sources said is very eager to see the departure of U.S. troops from his kingdom.

Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis, who is commanding the U.S. military exodus from Saudi Arabia, said Thursday that “there is as much urgency” in getting troops out of Saudi Arabia as there had been getting them in. Roughly 5,000 troops per day are leaving the Gulf, Pagonis said, and virtually all combat troops slated to leave will be gone by early June.

“In many ways, the war clearly changed attitudes in the Gulf,” Cheney told reporters Thursday. “There is a significantly enhanced willingness on the part of many governments . . . to cooperate on security arrangements.”

But while their willingness to cooperate in defense arrangements may have increased, Cheney’s comments, as well as Gulf officials’ behavior, made clear that the Gulf countries’ attitudes have not changed when it comes to admitting to such relationships publicly.

Not one leader of the six countries he visited this week would openly embrace any of the arrangements Cheney came to discuss. And Cheney, fearing that disclosure of any agreements would upset further negotiations, remained mum on details of the accords he did reach.

This is in spite of the fact that the Bush Administration’s principal security agenda in the Gulf countries has been to assure that U.S. troops could return quickly to defend the Persian Gulf in another crisis. Cheney on Thursday called U.S. forces “sort of the ultimate guarantee” of the Gulf nations’ security.

King Fahd, in recent years the most powerful leader of the Persian Gulf countries, waived a meeting with Cheney on Monday, during his initial stop in Riyadh. At that time, Saudi officials made clear to Cheney that they were eager to know “what other countries think” of American security proposals before reacting, a senior defense official said.

Not even Kuwait, which one American official said is privately “begging” for the United States to establish a base there, would openly embrace an agreement with the United States.

Cheney on Thursday defended the Gulf partners and said the unfolding negotiations “require necessarily that we maintain to some extent the confidentiality of the relationship.”