U.S. Combat Troops May Be Sent to Gulf

The Pentagon on Monday awaited orders to dispatch ground forces along with additional fighter planes, bombers and combat helicopters to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as indications mounted that at least a limited military deployment could come as early as this week.

At the White House, an interagency group met through the afternoon to evaluate a range of options to be relayed to President Bush in New York as possible Administration recommendations to the U.N. Security Council.

Pentagon sources said the options include dispatching some combat units, possibly including elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, to provide support and ground security for U.S. forces escorting U.N. helicopters inspecting Iraqi weapons sites. The ground units also could provide security for airfields, ports and bases that would be used if an outbreak of hostilities require the introduction of heavier forces.

“Saddam didn’t bite the bait,” said one Pentagon official, referring to last week’s warning by Bush that the United States is prepared to use military force if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein continues to obstruct U.N. arms-inspection teams. “And that means we’ll now have to prove we mean business, or he gets away with it.”

With Iraq already ostracized politically and sanctioned economically, U.S. officials said there are no viable alternatives except military action.

“He’s isolated, he’s rejected. We can’t impose any more harsh economic or political measures against him,” an Administration official said. Cutting off Baghdad’s limited oil sales for humanitarian purposes would hurt the Iraqi people rather than the regime, he added.

The warplanes and helicopters, which were awaiting deployment orders at bases in the United States, would join an armada of air and naval forces already in the region to provide military escorts for U.N. inspection missions.

At Ft. Bragg, N.C., home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army officials said a “ready brigade” specially trained and equipped for rapid deployment is continuing normal operations pending further word of a deployment.

The Army ready brigade is designed to be able to depart for world hot spots within 18 hours of receiving orders.

At the same time, officials stressed that a renewed U.S. military deployment is viewed with considerable wariness by the Pentagon and still could be averted. Administration officials continued Monday to negotiate with other allies as well as with the Iraqis. And in any event, they said it may be days before a final order is issued to U.S. forces.

Even so, many officials in Washington seemed to accept a new military deployment as a virtual fait accompli in response to Iraq’s repeated actions to thwart the arms-inspection effort, particularly the detention of U.N. personnel for several hours Monday.

U.S. sources said the Administration does not believe it needs any new authorization from the United Nations to send troops or warplanes back to the region. “And, to the best of my knowledge, no one at the United Nations interprets it differently,” said a State Department official.

But officials said it is unlikely that the United States will initiate any military action before Wednesday at the earliest. That would give Hussein at least 48 hours to provide assurances that he will permit the U.N. inspections to proceed unhindered. The White House had favored imposing a 48-hour deadline before Monday’ s detention of U.N. inspectors in Iraq.

Senior analysts were discussing which European allies might also send warplanes, primarily to give the possible U.S.-directed mission “a multinational flavor,” in the words of one official.

In another move designed to increase pressure on Baghdad, the Pentagon said it is sending additional F-111 and EF-111 warplanes to Turkey, where they will bolster U.S. aircraft already in place to protect Iraq’s minority Kurds from attacks by Baghdad.

Officials said the planes are being sent to compensate for a planned withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from bases in Turkey, where they have been participating in the Kurdish-protection plan called Operation Provide Comfort.

The Pentagon cautioned, however, that under a U.S. agreement with the Turks, the planes are not to be used to escort U.N. inspectors on missions into Iraq.

Knowledgeable Pentagon officials said the Administration is hesitant to send more forces to Saudi Arabia before an emergency shipment of Patriot missile batteries arrives in the desert kingdom later this week. The Saudis demanded the weapons, designed to shoot down incoming missiles or aircraft, as a condition of allowing U.N. inspections to be staged out of Saudi Arabia.

Pentagon leaders stressed that they have been wary of provoking a resumption of hostilities with Iraq until they have moved additional forces to the area. Nearly 200 American warplanes remain in the region from the Persian Gulf War deployment. Naval officials said that 26 warships, including two aircraft carriers, are within striking distance of Iraq.

The commander of naval forces in the Mideast told the British news service Reuters that U.S. Navy planes and helicopters will help escort U.N. teams searching for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction if air support is needed.

“We are involved in deliberate planning. . . . We would use our forces if it really came to the event,” Rear Adm. Raynor Taylor was quoted as saying in an interview aboard the LaSalle, the command ship of U.S. naval forces off Saudi Arabia.

Planes and helicopters operating from two naval battle groups in the Gulf--one attached to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and another with the amphibious assault ship Pelileu--could provide air escort, Taylor said.

Pentagon leaders have made it clear that if U.S. forces are to risk a resumption of hostilities by conducting the escorts, they must be given the time and the latitude to add substantially to the force now in the region.

In addition, some U.S. military officials were warning privately that the military option may be inadequate or inappropriate as a response to Monday’s confrontation over Iraq’s detention of U.N. inspectors and seizure of alleged nuclear-weapons-production documents.

“Sure, the Pentagon has qualms,” said a source close to the debate. “For understandable reasons, this is exactly what they don’t want to get into. Kuwait was a piece of cake. It was a single theater of operations. This has a much more nebulous quality.”

Also, Pentagon officials said they fear that pressure would mount on the military to complete tasks that many Americans believed went undone in the six-week-long Gulf War. On the one hand, military officers fear that they could be asked to hunt down and oust Hussein--a task they feel unqualified to do. But they also fear they would be asked to find and destroy all of Iraq’s remaining nuclear and chemical weapons--a task they believe cannot be done unless a major military force is put in place.

“We could send warplanes, but to bomb what? There’s a host of targets, but none relative to this problem (of documents). And even if we did bomb those targets (of suspected weapons sites), we probably wouldn’t get all the materiel he’s hiding,” said one Pentagon source.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl at the United Nations contributed to this report.