U.S. May Reduce Gulf Firepower as Crisis Abates

Even as more U.S. soldiers arrived in this sheikdom Sunday, Defense Secretary William J. Perry said the United States may withdraw one of its two aircraft carriers in the region as soon as next month because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appears to be backing down from his confrontation with Washington.

“All of the evidence that I have seen in the last four or five days is positive,” said Perry, who was quoted by news agency reporters on a flight from Finland to Sweden. “I truly believe Iraq is backing off the threatening actions they were taking a week ago.”

His comments reflected what officials here see as the probable conclusion of the latest face-off with Iraq. The crisis seemed to be ending as quickly as it began: Only a week ago Perry was on an urgent tour of the Middle East to request the help of Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to oppose any new challenge from the Iraqi leader.

The latest episode began Aug. 31, when Hussein sent tanks and at least 30,000 troops of his elite Revolutionary Guard into northern Iraq to help a Kurdish faction defeat a rival group. By helping Masoud Barzani’s Democratic Party of Kurdistan take control of the north, Hussein appeared to win influence in the region for the first time since his defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

His move sowed discord amid the U.S.-led alliance that fought him in 1991, whose members were split over Hussein’s right to intervene in a conflict in his own country, while he gained stature in some sectors of the Arab world for his defiant firing at U.S. aircraft over his territory a few days later.

But Hussein paid a price for his diplomatic and political gains: 44 U.S. cruise missiles launched Sept. 3 and 4 wiped out air defense installations near Baghdad, and the United States unilaterally expanded a “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq, sharply curtailing Hussein’s ability to threaten Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He also lost out on early implementation of a previously approved “oil for food” deal that would have allowed Iraq to sell controlled quantities of oil to pay for food and humanitarian supplies. Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday that the oil sales will not take place until it is deemed safe for U.N. monitors to go into northern Iraq “comfortably.”

Iraq’s retreat began Sept. 13--amid strong indications that the United States was preparing an even stronger military strike--when Hussein announced that Iraqi forces would desist from firing again at U.S. aircraft patrolling “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq.

Although Iraqi radar continued to track U.S. aircraft for several more days, allied officials now appear guardedly optimistic that the radar systems have been turned off and Hussein is not trying to rebuild destroyed air defense systems.

Western officials also see “no sign whatsoever” of Iraqi troops moving southward toward Kuwait, one official said, but American and Kuwaiti observers nonetheless have defended the decision to call in an additional 3,500 U.S. troops to fill out an armored brigade of 1,200 soldiers already in Kuwait.

Considering Hussein’s unpredictability, a Western diplomat said, Washington’s decision to send the troops demonstrated resolve and may have stopped the Iraqi leader from trying something in the south. Experience with Hussein has taught that “it is good to have a rapid-reaction capability, but it is even better to have a rapid preemptive capability,” the diplomat said.

After the Iraqi incursion last month in the northern “safe area”--set up by the alliance to protect Iraqi Kurds from Hussein’s harassment in the wake of the Gulf War--President Clinton ordered the aircraft carrier Enterprise and its battle group into the Gulf from the Mediterranean to join the carrier Carl Vinson. The Enterprise’s 74 warplanes began duty over Iraq on Sunday.

On a visit to Scandinavian capitals before a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Norway, Perry said Sunday that it now seems the Vinson could leave in October and return to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., as part of its regular rotation.

The ground troops, however, will remain and complete a training exercise in the desert 25 miles south of the Iraqi border, he said. Ground-based aircraft were also brought into Kuwait and Bahrain, but Gulf War allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey would not agree to similar deployments.

The U.S. buildup continued Sunday with the arrival of 600 more members of the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry from Ft. Hood, Texas. About 3,000 soldiers have reached Kuwait since Thursday, and the remainder are expected in the next few days, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Nickerson said.

As a sandstorm covered Kuwait with a brown murk that dimmed the sun but left temperatures in the 90s, the new arrivals were transported swiftly to the north to join their colleagues in live-fire maneuvers using state-of-the-art M1A1 Abrams tanks and M2A2 Bradley fighting vehicles.

Meanwhile, an official Iraqi newspaper said Sunday that a human rights organization will try to trace 600 Kuwaitis missing since the occupation of this country in 1990-91--a sign that Hussein may be adopting a more accommodating stance in the wake of the recent confrontation. Accounting for the missing men, women and children is one of the key conditions set by the United States and Kuwait for lifting the ban on oil sales by Iraq.

But Hussein kept up his blustering statements. Iraqi television aired footage of Hussein at a Cabinet meeting Saturday saying, “The people of Iraq and their armed forces have foiled the conspiracies of the foreigner and his attempts to partition Iraq through the [‘no-fly’] zones.

“The fighters of the air defense corps represented the whole of Iraq when they challenged the American aggression, despite [America’s] advanced technology and weapons.”