Iraqis Raid U.N. Bunker, Seize 15 Missiles, U.S. Officials Say : Persian Gulf: Soldiers vow to ‘level’ area if U.N. troops don’t withdraw. The White House issues stern new warnings and considers a military response. The Security Council calls an emergency meeting.

The confrontation between the West and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein escalated to a new crisis level Sunday as 200 Iraqi soldiers raided a U.N. bunker in the demilitarized zone between Kuwait and Iraq, brushing aside U.N. troops that were guarding the installation, U.S. officials said.

The officials said that the Iraqis, claiming they were acting “under the highest authority,” hauled away a sizable cache of weapons, including 15 Silkworm surface-to-surface missiles. They vowed to “level” the area by Monday if U.N. troops did not withdraw.

The raid constituted the boldest attempt by the Iraqi military since the Persian Gulf War to challenge U.N. forces anywhere in Iraq and is certain to increase the possibility that the United States might use military force to retaliate against the Iraqis.

A U.S. official called the incident “a flagrant violation” of U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, which governs the cease-fire accord, and a far more egregious flouting of U.N. authority than Iraq’s brief movement of missiles into the “no-fly zone” south of the 32nd Parallel early last week.

At the same time, Iraq also refused Sunday to allow a U.N. plane carrying a weapons inspection team to land in Baghdad, dismissing U.S. and U.N. warnings that such actions could lead to “serious consequences.”

Both the Bush Administration and the United Nations reacted angrily to the latest Iraqi provocations. The White House, acting through U.S. allies, privately issued stern new warnings to Iraq not to carry out its threats to level the U.N. bunker and to bar more U.N. flights.

At U.S. insistence, the U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting today to discuss the Iraqi violations, with expectations that council members will act quickly--probably within the next day or two--to formulate a strong response.

Although officials declined to say precisely what the United States will recommend, it is clear that some form of military action is among the main options that the allies would consider. Washington already has said that it will not issue any new warnings before launching a strike.

Diplomats said that the action taken by the Security Council will depend mainly on Iraq’s behavior in the next few hours. They said that, if Baghdad backs down, it could escape with little more than another warning.

But they warned that if Iraqi forces carry out their threat to level the bunker--or if Baghdad continues to bar U.N. flights--the council could order military action or impose even tougher new restrictions, such as extending the no-fly zone that it set last August.

It was not immediately clear whether the Bush Administration, in its waning days in office, would be eager--or even able--to muster a new international coalition to send ground troops to quell the Iraqis.

But officials said that the allies have substantial air and naval power in the area and might seek to destroy the Silkworms that the Iraqis seized Sunday. “Words alone aren’t going to do anything here,” one official said. “It’s a question of whether we’re willing to back this up with force.”

The United States also planned urgent consultations with its key U.N. allies--Britain, France and Russia--early today to decide on a joint coalition strategy. U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf region remained on high-alert status Sunday.

Sunday’s incidents came barely a day after Iraq narrowly averted a round of intensive U.S. air strikes, moving its missiles from threatening positions in the country’s southern no-fly zone just in time to meet a 48-hour ultimatum that the allies had issued late Wednesday.

Although Bush had claimed on Saturday that Iraq had “backed down” in the missile flap, an Iraqi spokesman insisted Sunday that Baghdad had merely moved its missiles to “the places we decided they should be” and did not do so because of the U.S. military threat.

The demilitarized zone, extending 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) along either side of the entire Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier, was set up after the end of the Persian Gulf War to reduce the prospect of clashes between Iraq and Kuwait. A special U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission, known as UNIKOM, has mapped a new border and is posting new boundaries.

U.S. officials said that the Iraqi raid on the U.N. bunker came at 7 a.m. Iraqi time, when about 200 armed Iraqis appeared at the entrance of the UNIKOM headquarters at Umm al Qasr, a former naval base now known as Camp Khor, and demanded that the U.N. forces step aside.

They said that the U.N. forces, commanded by a Ugandan general and armed only with a few pistols, immediately withdrew, leaving the Iraqis to plunder the bunker, in which Iraqi military equipment had been stored before and during the Persian Gulf War.

Besides the 15 Silkworm missiles, officials said the Iraqis were believed to have carried away artillery shells and other ordnance that was stored there. Iraqi Gen. Abdullah Firaz then warned that his forces were planning to level the building today.

After the Iraqis left, UNIKOM forces were ordered to take a detailed inventory of the bunker so that officials could determine exactly what had been carried away.

Silkworm missiles, manufactured by China, are considered effective and dangerous. In the summer of 1987, during a U.S. operation to escort Kuwaiti ships in the Persian Gulf, several vessels were struck by Silkworms deployed by Iran.

The Silkworm, capable of striking targets at a range of as much as 62 miles, can carry a 1,100-pound warhead. While the missile is not very accurate, it caused significant consternation among Navy officials during the escort operation and could be used against land targets as well. Officials said that, although only half the Iraqis who stormed the U.N. bunker were dressed in uniforms, all were believed to be members of the Iraqi army.

U.S. officials were critical of the U.N. management of the Camp Khor unit, which was supposed to have been prepared to prevent such raids.

The U.N. soldiers that were guarding the bunker Sunday morning were lightly armed and stepped aside without resistance when the Iraqi force appeared. Also, although the U.N. force is authorized at a strength of 500 soldiers, it has only 250 troops.

American officials also complained that for months the United States has urged Kuwait, which has access to the area, to destroy the weapons that have been stored in the bunkers so that they would not pose a temptation to Iraqi forces north of the demilitarized zone. The Kuwaitis, however, have ignored those appeals.

“This needs to be examined in the context of those who say the United Nations can take over all of the world’s problems,” a Bush Administration official said Sunday. “Traditional peacekeepers do not do well if you have a party that refuses to cooperate.”

The problem has cropped up frequently in recent days. Just last Friday, rebel Serbian forces successfully flouted a U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia, killing Bosnia’s Muslim deputy prime minister as he was returning to Sarajevo, under protection of French U.N. troops, from talks at Sarajevo’s airport.

The Iraqi refusal to let U.N. aircraft land on its soil already has been denounced as unacceptable by the United States and the Security Council. Both have warned that such a move would bring “serious consequences.”

Besides the U.N. weapons inspection teams, the ban also would bar U.N. personnel working for the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission, which is chartered to settle the border between the two countries, and for humanitarian relief of the Kurdish population in northern Iraq.

The Iraqi refusal was the latest in a series of episodes in which Baghdad has sought to flout U.N. authority. Just last month, the Iraqis began blowing up trucks delivering relief supplies to Kurds in the country’s north.

U.N. officials in New York said that they had no immediate information about the national origin of the U.N. plane that was denied permission to land in Iraq or about the city for which the aircraft was destined.

They said that the passengers scheduled to board the U.N. flight--all inspectors and employees of the Baghdad office of the U.N. Special Commission, which handles most weapons inspection activities--were stranded in Bahrain waiting for permission to enter Iraq.

Iraq challenged U.N. weapons inspection teams last June, refusing for several weeks to permit them to enter an Agriculture Ministry repository that they suspected was holding records detailing Iraq’s program to build weapons of mass destruction.

The standoff ended in a compromise in which the United Nations essentially gave in and allowed the Iraqis time enough to clear out any records before U.N. inspectors entered the building. The Bush Administration was outraged about the United Nations’ compromise.

Baghdad said Sunday that it would allow the inspection team back into Iraq if it agreed to fly on Iraqi planes--a step that would violate existing economic sanctions against Iraq and would give Baghdad the power to control where--and how quickly--the inspection teams move about the country.

Iraq repeatedly has refused to provide U.N. inspectors with all the information they have sought on the country’s program for producing weapons of mass destruction.