U.S. Threats Against Iraq Stir Unease : Mideast: In Egypt, Turkey and some other countries, the prospect of renewed fighting is politically unsettling.

American-initiated military threats against Iraq on nuclear and Kurdish issues have stirred growing misgivings in the Middle East.

Kuwait and other Persian Gulf states back the formation of a Turkey-based allied strike force to protect the Kurds, as well as threats of bombing raids on Iraqi targets if Baghdad does not come clean on its nuclear capabilities. But in some countries, including such Gulf War stalwarts as Egypt and Turkey, the prospect of renewed fighting is proving politically uncomfortable.

In Cairo, Saadeddin Ibrahim, a columnist for the pro-government daily newspaper Al Ahram, argued that Arab and Western interests converged last year on the need to liberate Kuwait but that these interests no longer are in line. Recent U.S. policy, Ibrahim declared, was aimed at “dwarfing Arab military power.” The weekly mouthpiece of the opposition Young Egypt Party put it more colorfully: “Bush, the mass murderer, is butchering Iraq today, and tomorrow will be Egypt’s turn.”

Political haymaking aside, continued American pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--and more specifically on the beleaguered Iraqi people--has touched an Arab sore point. The London-based Mideast Mirror reports that several key officials of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Cairo “are uneasy about the increasingly humiliating American pressure on Iraq.”

Mubarak himself, asked last weekend whether he would commit Egyptian troops to a military strike against Iraq, responded: “Absolutely not. . . . We did not send our soldiers to the Gulf to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but to contribute to the liberation of Kuwait. It was a pure case of defense, that’s all.”

In Turkey, meanwhile, the 3,000-man U.S.-European rapid-reaction force deployed in the eastern provinces to protect Iraqi Kurds came under domestic editorial fire. A columnist for the daily paper Milliyet said that President Turgut Ozal might commit Turkish troops to any protective strike in order to “make amends” for holding them out of the Gulf War. The leftist newspaper Cumhuriyet reported a tense atmosphere around the U.S. air base at Incirlik.

With Hussein’s once-vaunted army broken as an instrument of power beyond Iraqi borders, the Arab leaders’ concerns over the American threats appear to be political, a fear that the Bush Administration’s tough political line and name-calling could spark a backlash that spills outside Iraq.

In Jordan, the influential daily Al Rai suggested that the United Nations has become an agency of the U.S. State Department and called for “all non-collaborationist Arab regimes . . . to shake off their fear” of American power and condemn the threats. Why abolish Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and leave Israel’s untouched? Arab editorial writers ask.

Hussein’s aides are doing what they can to fuel the controversy. Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi told reporters in Baghdad on Monday that a U.S.-led air attack on Iraqi nuclear facilities is likely, despite what he described as full cooperation by the government on U.N. demands for access to nuclear materials under the cease-fire resolution. “We cannot rule out this probability,” he said. “The intention and determination to destroy Iraq and destroy its political system . . . still exists.”

Hammadi called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League to discuss the threat. He accused the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council of pressing a “premeditated plan” to crush Iraq to help establish Israeli domination of the Middle East. This line--what Baghdad calls “the Zionist-U.S.-European conspiracy”--plays well in the region, where people talk about Western conspiracies as enthusiastically as Americans discuss the weather.

Last Friday, the Security Council declared that Baghdad would face “serious consequences” if it did not provide U.N. inspectors with complete information on its nuclear programs by next Thursday. Two days later, the Iraqis--talking cooperatively but moving grudgingly--turned over another list of nuclear data, but it is not yet clear whether the Security Council is satisfied.