Marines Assault Beach as Kuwait War Games Begin : Persian Gulf: Military exercises are called ‘more realistic’ in view of Iraqi intransigence toward U.N.

Kuwait’s new air-raid sirens screamed, and a squadron of American attack helicopters roared overhead as 1,900 U.S. Marines hit the beach near Kuwait city Tuesday morning in the first of three major military exercises clearly meant as Washington’s answer to continuing Iraqi defiance to cease-fire terms.

The mock assault force of Operation Eager Mace, the largest joint U.S. military operation in the Persian Gulf since the end of the war that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait last year, was officially billed as a symbol of “the U.S. commitment to security and stability in the Gulf region.”

Speaking to reporters on the narrow beachhead of the port of Shuwaik as the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit splashed ashore, U.S. Navy Capt. Braden J. Phillips, commander of Amphibious Squadron 1, stressed that the exercise had been planned since last November under agreements signed between Kuwait and Washington after the tiny Gulf state was liberated from Iraq.

But Phillips conceded that Baghdad’s recent intransigence toward U.N. weapons inspectors, which escalated the war of words between Washington and Iraq, spread tension throughout the Gulf and will make “the training that we intended to accomplish here . . . a little bit more realistic.”

For the Kuwaitis--who, despite their vast oil wealth, are still struggling to rebuild not only their small armed forces but also a nation still littered with land mines, vast oil spills and desert fields of wrecked armor--the joint U.S.-Kuwaiti exercises are a critical message both to Iraq and to their own people.

“First, there is its psychological effect on the people of Kuwait. . . ,” said Faisal Haji, Kuwait’s ambassador to Bahrain. “Secondly, I think it’s very effective to the Iraqi regime, a statement that ‘We are here.’ ”

Clearly, the message was not lost on Iraq, whose state-run media blasted the Kuwaitis as “stooges” caving in to America’s ambition to control the flow of the Arabs’ oil.

Calling the U.S.-Kuwaiti war games “provocative,” Iraq’s ruling party newspaper, Al Thawra, declared: “Washington aims at keeping the rulers of Kuwait captives to their illusions of what the White House calls the security umbrella.”

Even before Tuesday’s dramatic amphibious landing, Baghdad used the second anniversary of its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait to restate its claim to its southern neighbor as Iraq’s “19th province,” a claim that Baghdad had promised to relinquish in a series of U.N. cease-fire agreements it signed to end the war.

In a menacing signal from Baghdad on Tuesday, a U.N. bus was reported stoned by Iraqis angered by the continuing presence of several hundred U.N. guards and staff members trying to enforce those cease-fire resolutions in several parts of the country.

The United Nations, meanwhile, announced that another 26-member weapons-inspection team, this one led by a Russian, plans to visit Iraq on Saturday.

The current tension between Iraq and the U.S.-led coalition that won the Gulf War developed when the Iraqi leadership refused for 21 days to permit U.N. inspectors into Baghdad’s Agriculture Ministry building in search of clues to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

A subsequent compromise that permitted the inspectors to enter the building gave Iraq a significant veto over the membership of the search teams.

Referring to the signals the exercises are meant to send to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Kuwait’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Mohammed Sirri, said: “We are exercising all year round, whether he watches or not. But the message is, ‘We are always ready.’ ”

The heavily armed and camouflaged Marines, launched from the four ships commanded by Capt. Phillips a few miles at sea while attack helicopters whirred overhead, are the first of more than 5,000 soldiers, sailors and Marines who will ultimately take part in two weeks of war games with the Kuwaiti military involving three separate exercises.

Most of the Marines, more than half of whom had served here during the Persian Gulf War, will encamp at a desert site about 40 miles northeast of Kuwait city.

Operation Eager Mace had been scheduled as long ago as last fall to coincide with the invasion anniversary, along with a second limited training exercise called Native Fury. A larger U.S. Army exercise, named Intrinsic Action, was not scheduled to begin until September, but the standoff over the Agriculture Ministry persuaded the Pentagon to move up the timing to coincide with the other war games.

Intrinsic Action will involve two Army units, both of which took part in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm--the 1st Cavalry Division from Ft. Hood, Tex., and the 5th Special Forces Group based at Ft. Campbell, Ky.

Already, many of the Marines who landed on Kuwait’s urban corniche Tuesday, most of them from Camp Pendleton, sensed that their training mission could well change into something more serious.

As Capt. Phillips put it: “There is nothing to lead one to believe there is a threat at this point. But it’s difficult to put myself (inside) the head of the guys that might be a threat.”

Whether or not another threat emerges, though, the landing itself illustrated that threats to this tiny nation still abound, even 16 months after the last shot was fired.

The steady stream of Marines, armored vehicles, trucks, Hovercraft and weaponry all hit the beach inside a 100-yard-wide cement ramp because much of the beach is still believed to be mined.

Marines Land for War Games

U.S. Marines landed near the port of Shuwaik, the first of 5,000 troops to take part in maneuvers with Kuwaitis. Most of the Marines will move to a desert camp about 40 miles from Kuwait city.