U.S. Increases Pressure on Iraq : Persian Gulf: Administration ships Patriot missiles to Kuwait and sends third carrier to region. Moves signal resolve to make Baghdad comply with U.N. resolutions.

The United States intensified pressure Monday on Iraq to comply with a wide range of U.N. resolutions, ordering a third aircraft carrier to the region, sending Patriot missiles to Kuwait and announcing U.S.-Kuwaiti military exercises near the Iraqi border.

The moves were intended to signal that the United States and its allies are still poised to launch a punitive military strike against Baghdad if it continues to defy other U.N. resolutions--even if it follows through on Sunday’s agreement to give U.N. weapons inspectors access to the country’s Agriculture Ministry building.

The President also met with top national security advisers Monday, this time to discuss steps that the United States and its allies can take to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from flouting the resolutions that set the terms for a cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War.

“We want to keep the pressure on, and we want him to know it’s on,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said just before Bush returned for the Oval Office meeting from a one-day campaign trip to Michigan and Wisconsin.

“We want him (Hussein) to know it’s a much larger problem” than the question of access to the Agriculture Ministry, Fitzwater added.

A senior Administration official said the United States will encourage the United Nations to step up the pace of inspections of Iraqi facilities as a means to test Hussein’s willingness to comply with the U.N. resolutions.

“We want to see more inspections because we want to see more pressure points,” the official said. He said such aggressive tactics were supported by European allies concerned that Iraq’s success in defying U.N. sanctions might undermine the ability of the United Nations’ peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and elsewhere.

The Administration is determined to find some way to tighten its strictures on Hussein to avoid letting him capitalize on the flap over the weapons-inspection issue.

Although Washington has for the moment abandoned any plans for an imminent military strike against Iraq, State Department spokesman Joseph Snyder warned that “it’s quite clear that all options remain open” if Baghdad does not fulfill all of its cease-fire obligations.

The moves came only a day after Bush grudgingly accepted Sunday’s accord, which calls for access to the Agriculture Ministry building today by a reshuffled U.N. weapons-inspection team that excludes Americans.

In addition, the State Department announced that Secretary of State James A. Baker III will meet, probably this week, with a delegation of Iraqis representing a spectrum of groups opposing Hussein in an effort to demonstrate U.S. support for their efforts.

Rolf Ekeus, the U.N. official who negotiated Sunday’s accord, said in Bahrain on Monday that he had received assurances from Iraq “that this is the end of the confrontation” but added that “my experience is such that I can’t take that for granted.”

Ekeus also reiterated his concern that the Iraqis may have used the standoff to relocate many of the records that had been on file in the Agriculture Ministry building--left unguarded for days after the U.N. team retreated under threat of violence from anti-U.S. demonstrators. But he expressed the belief that the team members will still find some traces of Iraq’s weapons program when they are finally allowed to enter the building.

The dispute that led to Sunday’s accord began July 5 when Iraq blocked efforts by the U.N. inspectors to enter the Agriculture Ministry, which they suspected was being used to house archives on Iraq’s missiles systems. The standoff lasted 21 days.

Although the accord seemed to defuse the Iraqi crisis temporarily, U.S. officials have been fearful that the pact--which critics said was little more than a face-saving gesture for both sides--might encourage Hussein to believe he is gaining ground by his defiance.

Bush warned during his campaign trip Monday that despite Washington’s acquiescence to Sunday’s accord, the allies would seek to maintain their pressure on Hussein in order to force him to comply with the other U.N. cease-fire provisions.

“He is going to do it,” the President vowed Monday. “He may not know it, but he’s going to live up to those resolutions.”

The State Department’s Snyder said Monday that those violations include Iraq’s refusal to disclose its full arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, participate in talks on its boundaries with Kuwait, account for Kuwaiti hostages and return Kuwaiti property.

Iraq also has balked at renewing a U.N. memorandum of understanding on the operation of humanitarian agencies in the country, has imposed an economic blockade of Kurdish separatist villages in the north and has launched jet attacks on Shiite Muslim insurgents in the south.

And it has declined to follow still another U.N. resolution that calls for Baghdad to use profits from a limited sale of oil, allowed under an exemption from a broad trade embargo, to help buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people.

In Baghdad on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Hamza Zubaidi proclaimed that the U.N.-Iraqi accord was a victory for Baghdad because it forced the world body to capitulate to Iraqi demands that the inspection team not include Americans.

He said the agreement “embodies the Iraqis’ firm national will” in standing up to the allied coalition.

Iraq had contended initially that allowing the entry of Americans into its Agriculture Ministry would constitute a violation of its national sovereignty. U.N. officials said Iraq had forfeited such sovereignty rights as part of the cease-fire accord.

The military-related moves that the Administration announced Monday include these measures:

* The Navy ordered the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy to cut short its scheduled port visit in the Virgin Islands and steam to the Indian Ocean for use in case of allied military action against Iraq.

With two other carriers, the Independence and the Saratoga, already in the region, the dispatch of the Kennedy means that more than 200 Navy warplanes will be available in case a military strike is ordered. The Kennedy is accompanied by nine other U.S. warships, which will join an armada of nearly 40 ships within striking distance of Iraq.

* The Army sent a Patriot anti-missile missile battery to Kuwait “to make it clear that the United States is prepared to take appropriate steps to defend the security of its friends in the region.” The United States already has six Patriot batteries on duty in the region. Each battery has eight missile launchers.

* The Pentagon announced that U.S. Marines will conduct joint military exercises with Kuwaiti troops next week in a practice amphibious landing precariously close to the Iraqi border. Up to 2,000 Marines will participate.

Although Pentagon officials toned down the talk of war that has dominated their comments in recent days, they asserted that they are ready to respond to any further Iraqi violations of the cease-fire agreements.

“We certainly put our marker in the water, and Saddam Hussein saw it and assessed it for what it was: dead seriousness,” one senior military official said. “Let’s wait till Tuesday and the agriculture building to see if this is just another in a long series of violations.”

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl, traveling in Michigan with President Bush, contributed to this article.