Germany Offers U.S. Use of Bases to Strike Iraq

The German government Saturday offered the United States the use of its air bases for a strike on Iraq after a group of U.S. senators publicly scolded Washington’s NATO allies for their muted support of--or quiet resistance to--U.S. efforts to curb Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In his strongest expression of support for the U.S. yet, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl warned Hussein that “the world cannot allow that such a man can play for time while the danger grows. There will come a time when we have to say: Thus far, but no further.”

He added that it is “completely clear” to him that the United States should be able to use German bases if needed in any air campaign.

Kohl’s words were warmly received by U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who was en route to the Persian Gulf to explain to six regional allies Washington’s plans for an airstrike on Iraq in the event that diplomacy fails to persuade Hussein to allow U.N. weapons inspectors full access to disputed presidential compounds.

Cohen also signed orders on Saturday to boost the U.S. forces in the Gulf with six F-117 Stealth fighters, six B-52 heavy bombers, a B-1 bomber, six F-16 fighters, about 30 support aircraft and several sets of gear to detect biological or chemical attack.

The additional aircraft will join about 400 U.S. warplanes already in the region. The F-117s are headed to Kuwait; the B-52s to the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia; and the B-1 and F-16s to Bahrain. The gear for detection of chemical and biological attack will be sent to Kuwait.

The U.S. now has about 30,000 troops and three carriers and associated ships in the region.

In Washington, President Clinton talked by telephone with Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd about Iraq’s failure to comply with U.N. disarmament efforts. The two leaders “agreed on the threat posed and on the need for Hussein to comply immediately,” a senior U.S. official said.

As a result, the Clinton administration is “more confident than ever” that the United States will get “all the support we need,” the official added. Washington would like access to Saudi bases for both political and military reasons.

Cohen, who begins his swing through the Gulf today with a stop in Saudi Arabia, is expected to conduct follow-up talks with King Fahd as well as Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan ibn Abdulaziz, other U.S. sources said.

Cohen called German Chancellor Kohl’s statement “very welcome” and pointedly said he hoped for support from other NATO members through diplomatic, military or “moral” efforts.

Though he did not say so, his comments seemed aimed in part at putting pressure on the French, who have strongly resisted U.S. calls for a strike if diplomacy does not end the standoff soon.

Kohl’s declaration, which came during an annual conference of NATO officials, will probably have little practical effect because German bases are too far from Iraq to be of great use in an air campaign, U.S. officials said.

But the statement had substantial symbolic meaning, coming at a time when some NATO countries are openly dubious about airstrikes, and none, except Britain, has explicitly supported the United States in pushing for an attack if Iraq does not allow unrestricted U.N. weapons inspections.

*

Kohl’s remarks were prompted by statements from U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), who took NATO allies to task for not stepping forward at a time when, they said, the U.S. is defending European security at great effort and cost. They pointed to U.S. support for peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has cost about $7 billion, and U.S. plans to expand NATO, which will cost at least $150 million a year by the most modest estimates.

“They’ve all been muted, and some have been actively working against us,” McCain said of the Europeans.

He hailed Kohl’s remarks, but said in an interview that the comments marked “the first time Kohl, or anybody in his government, has said anything. . . . The United States and Europe must stand together.”

Volker Ruehe, Germany’s defense minister, said that while use of the bases might not be necessary, he understood that the Americans’ greatest need was for “clear political support.”

The Germans’ backing, he said, was “not lukewarm.”

Even so, Kohl told members of the conference that some Europeans are concerned about what might follow an airstrike, and he noted that Europeans have yet to develop a common position on the issue.

In an attempt to garner more support, President Clinton also talked to the Australian and Portuguese prime ministers.

Backing for a U.S. military strike is becoming more important with each day that does not bring some indication that Baghdad may budge. A White House official said Saturday that ongoing Russian diplomatic efforts had so far produced “nothing new.”

And in an unusual move, Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday gave a joint radio address in which they issued another stiff warning to Iraq.

Blair said “no issue has been more pressing” than the Iraqi crisis during his four-day visit to Washington.

“This is a man who has already compiled sufficient chemical and biological weapons to wipe out the world’s population. . . . He must be stopped,” Blair warned in the five-minute broadcast, which was taped in the map room where the two leaders’ predecessors once plotted strategy during World War II. “Britain will be there, as we have been in the past.”

*

Blair was even more forceful in television interviews aboard the aircraft returning him to London on Saturday, saying, “There will undoubtedly be military action unless there is a diplomatic solution based on the firm principle that Saddam Hussein must go back and abide by the agreement he made not to carry on developing weapons of mass destruction.”

In another bid to shore up Washington’s position, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, said Saturday that his just-concluded 18,000-mile diplomatic mission, which took him to eight countries on three continents in eight days, convinced him there is broad, if low-key, support for Washington’s policy of firmness toward Iraq.

“There is sort of a silent majority out there supporting U.S. policy . . . on Iraq,” he told a small group of reporters in a telephone conference call in New York. “We got a sense there is more support out there than is being reported.”

Richardson focused his trip, which ended Friday, on states represented on the U.N. Security Council that were not visited earlier by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

He spoke with heads of government or foreign ministers in Sweden, Portugal, Kenya, Gambia, Gabon, Brazil and Costa Rica, and he conferred with Slovenia’s prime minister, Janez Drnovsek, and officials from Japan and other countries at the International Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland.

The U.S. may need the votes of those nations if Britain goes ahead with a plan seeking Security Council approval of a resolution declaring Iraq “in material breach” of the U.N. resolutions ending the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Adoption of Britain’s resolution would be seen as a council endorsement of the use of force. The U.S. already claims U.N. authority for an attack under existing resolutions, but Britain would prefer a new finding.

Although Richardson repeated the U.S. line that it prefers a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the confrontation, he added that “diplomacy right now is kind of on life support.”

At the center of the dispute with Iraq are presidential compounds that Baghdad has declared off-limits to U.N. inspectors and which the U.N. believes may shelter research on, storage facilities for and documentation of Baghdad’s illegal weapons programs.

Before the Security Council takes up the inspection issue this week, however, it is likely to consider a proposal by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to greatly expand a program under which Iraq is allowed to export oil under close U.N. supervision in return for food and other humanitarian supplies.

The oil-for-food program is intended to counter arguments that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq are causing too much privation among ordinary people. Iraq has already angrily rejected parts of Annan’s plan, saying it would give the U.N. too much control over Iraqi internal affairs.

*

In Baghdad, a week of intense talks ended with Iraq agreeing Saturday that U.N. experts will dig up sites where Baghdad says it buried chemical weapons and missile warheads once loaded with chemical and biological agents.

The excavations may help clarify the number of warheads that U.N. experts cannot account for.

But it is still unclear how they will help prove Iraq’s claims that it has destroyed all its chemical weapons, given the volume and diversity of chemical agents with which Iraq experimented.

Iraqis say there are many weapons-burial sites scattered across the country. Oil Minister Amir Mohammed Rashid, a mastermind of Iraq’s weapons programs, said he fears that some Iraqis may have tinkered with certain unguarded sites.

Sources close to the talks, which Iraq had hoped would end its current standoff with the U.N., said the experts insisted on the probe when they found Iraqi documentation insufficient to prove that the weapons had been eliminated.

The proposal signals that the talks did not end doubts among U.N. inspectors that Iraq still might be hiding missile warheads and chemical weapons that it claims to have destroyed in 1991 and 1992. The U.N. inspectors also believe the Iraqis still have biological agents.

“We should not expect too much result from the talks, but they were quite positive,” Rashid said, adding that more such talks will be held before the next visit by chief U.N. arms inspector Richard Butler in March.

*

Times staff writer Craig Turner at the United Nations contributed to this report.

* EXECUTIONS DESCRIBED

Jordanian who was imprisoned in Iraq corroborates reports of mass killings of inmates. A12