U.S. Warns Iraq to Halt Rebuilding of Air Defense Sites

The United States has sent a warning to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatening to launch another attack if Baghdad does not immediately stop rebuilding air defense installations destroyed by U.S. missiles last week, senior Clinton administration sources said Sunday.

The warning, transmitted over the weekend through Iraq’s U.N. mission in New York and the Iraqi Interest Section in the Algerian Embassy here, was issued after U.S. intelligence detected Iraqi experts scrambling to repair the radar installations and command-and-control bunkers at four air defense bases in the country’s south.

“He will have to accept very serious consequences if he does” try to rebuild the missile sites, said Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Repairing the air defense systems could upgrade Baghdad’s ability to attack American air patrols over the “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq, which recently was expanded northward from the 32nd to the 33rd parallel.

Baghdad claims that it fired Russian-made SA-6 missiles at U.S. warplanes flying over the “no-fly” zone Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The missiles were not detected by U.S. radar or by American pilots in the air, but U.S. officials said they believe Iraq did fire at least one.

“This says to us that Iraq really intends not to honor the ‘no-fly’ zone. It means that Iraq is now going after us,” a Pentagon official said.

On Sunday, tension also mounted in northern Iraq as a Kurdish guerrilla faction allied with Iraq tightened the noose on its rival’s last remaining stronghold with the capture of strategic crossroads and mountain passes.

Aid workers and combatants confirmed the fighting near the stronghold of Sulaymaniyah, but there were confusing reports of possible involvement by Iraqi troops in the area.

U.N. sources in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, told The Times by satellite telephone that there was no evidence of any direct involvement by nearby Iraqi forces in the new attacks by fighters of the Baghdad-allied Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP). In the latest attacks, confident KDP forces captured the dusty 50-house village of Degala and the historic town of Kuysanjaq, putting them 40 miles from Sulaymaniyah.

But the beleaguered Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) charged anew Sunday that Iraqi troops were fighting on the side of the KDP. Iraqi support was decisive Aug. 31 when the KDP captured the PUK-held Irbil, triggering the punitive American cruise missile strikes against Hussein.

Through his KDP surrogates, Hussein has increased his control over most key areas in a second U.S.-protected “no-fly” zone above the 36th parallel, according to U.S. and Iraqi sources.

The Clinton administration is facing increasing congressional criticism of its response to the latest Persian Gulf crisis.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Sunday for wider attacks on Hussein’s military.

“We have to cripple Hussein’s military power to a point that he is not involved in adventurism,” Lugar said on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

A senior Pentagon official said of the reports of Iraqi involvement in Sunday’s fighting: “This is a very disturbing turn of events. We’re not going to get involved in the Kurdish civil war. But we’re also not going to stand idly by if Hussein is involved in attacks on his own people.”

Visiting journalists in Sulaymaniyah reported an impending sense of doom as foreign agencies abandoned the city of 750,000 people near the border with Iran.

“I think we may soon be facing a humanitarian disaster,” said Rob Jones, an aid worker for the Italy-based medical relief team Emergency. He noted that other fighting to the north and east had effectively cut road access to the city except through narrow mountain passes to Iran.

The captured town of Kuysanjaq, 40 miles east of Irbil, is a center of Kurdish political activity. It is also the birthplace of PUK leader Jalal Talabani.

“We’re very fearful for the lives of political activists,” said Barham Saleh, the PUK representative in Washington. “We fear they’ll be turned over to Hussein’s agents”--a fate that reportedly happened to dozens of PUK officials and sympathizers in Irbil.

PUK officials charged that Iraqi troops and artillery opened the route for the attacking KDP forces of faction leader Masoud Barzani. But Clinton administration officials said they were unable to determine the veracity of that claim. The initial Iraqi invasion devastated a CIA operation in northern Iraq, leaving the United States with fewer sources of information on the ground, U.S. officials have conceded.

Thousands of Kurdish refugees have fled the new fighting, Saleh said. Many have headed to the border with Iran. U.S. officials fear that Tehran could become more directly involved in the situation if the refugee numbers grow.

But the continuing victories of Hussein’s allies have not altered the U.S. decision not to get directly involved in the north.

“We’re going to react as we deem necessary at the time and place of our choice and at a place that reflects our interests,” the senior Pentagon official said.

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said on CNN: “Rather than engage tactically in the situation in the north, it makes better sense for us to operate on a strategic basis and try to say to Saddam Hussein, ‘You can play these games in the north, but you’re going to pay one hell of a price every time you do it.’ ”

U.S. officials have focused on Hussein’s forces in the south because of their proximity to regional oil supplies and the allied nations of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The administration has already prepared a series of possible actions if Baghdad does not heed the U.S. warning about repairing its air defenses, officials said Sunday.

“The strikes are ready to present to the president, and the options are pre-wired,” one official said.

Although many members of the original Persian Gulf War coalition either criticized or distanced themselves from the U.S. attack last week, the administration is coming under criticism at home for not doing enough.

Washington should not have allowed the Iraqi military to move north and operate with impunity, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday on the CBS-TV program “Face the Nation.”

“It’s important to recognize that . . . Iraqi air power has never been the problem. It’s been the Iraqi ground forces,” he said.

Times staff writer William D. Montalbano and special correspondent Hugh Pope contributed to this report from northern Iraq.