U.S. Won’t Ask Saudis for Use of Bases to Hit Iraq

The Clinton administration has decided against asking Saudi Arabia to allow U.S. attack aircraft to fly bombing missions from its soil in any air campaign against Iraq, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said Sunday.

Arriving here to consult Saudi leaders about a possible air campaign, Cohen said he had decided not to put the politically charged question to the Saudis because “I don’t think it’s necessary” with other bases and ships available to U.S. forces.

“We have not made such a request, and it is not my intent to do so,” Cohen told reporters aboard his plane as he flew to this Red Sea port city.

The decision means that in any air campaign, strike aircraft could fly from neighboring Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as from the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and two aircraft carriers. Leaders of other Persian Gulf nations have also indicated their willingness to permit such flights.

Appearing on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that while Saudi Arabia has publicly stated its opposition to the use of force against Iraq in the current crisis, the administration still expects to win its backing.

“I have confidence that and trust in the Saudi government that they will support [us] if force is necessary,” she said. “. . . I do have confidence that in the end the Saudis, who have been good allies and friends, will do what is necessary.”

Albright added that “time is running out” for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, which was precipitated by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow U.N. weapons inspectors full access to sites they suspect may be used to manufacture or store weapons of mass destruction. But she said that any strike by the United States and its allies against Iraq is still weeks away.

Cohen said he still expects the Saudis to allow U.S. forces to fly support aircraft--tankers, radar jammers and surveillance craft--from their bases, though he stopped short of saying that they had provided explicit assurances they would do so.

Although U.S. leaders insisted the decision will not handicap any military effort against Hussein, it may assume large symbolic significance in the eyes of the world.

In recent weeks, the administration has struggled to drum up explicit support for a strike even from some of its closest allies. Now, the partial participation of America’s most important ally in the region could be taken as a signal of tepid world backing for the enterprise.

Many allies, while condemning the Iraqi leader, harbor doubts about whether an air campaign would truly help force him to allow the resumption of U.N. weapons inspections or would set back in any substantial way the chemical and biological weapons program that is the source of the United States’ years-long dispute with Iraq.

While the Saudis have declared that Hussein should comply with United Nations resolutions and open his doors to weapons inspections, they have been leery of any military strike. The monarchy fears a strong domestic reaction if it is seen to be participating too closely in a strike against a fellow Arab and his long-suffering populace.

As recently as 1996, the Saudis turned down a request from the United States to use their airfields for strikes on Hussein, who was then taking aggressive actions against Kurds in the north of Iraq.

Still, as recently as Tuesday, when Albright visited the monarchy, U.S. policymakers were holding out hope that the Saudis would allow strikes from their bases.

The 50 F-15 and F-16 warplanes based at Prince Sultan Air Base in remote central Saudi Arabia, now used to patrol a “no-fly” zone over Iraq, may be shifted to other countries if military planners wish to do so, Cohen said Sunday.

U.S. forces in the region also include F-117 Stealth fighters in Kuwait, B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters in Bahrain, and heavy B-52 bombers on Diego Garcia. And there are about 100 strike aircraft based on the two U.S. aircraft carriers now in the region, the Independence and the George Washington. A third carrier, the Nimitz, left the Gulf on Sunday.

U.S. officials insisted Sunday that in addition to the support of other Gulf states, the increase in military personnel and equipment in the region made it unnecessary to ask for more help from the Saudis.

In contrast with the situation before the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the United States now routinely keeps the equivalent of a battalion of ground troops in the region, an inventory of standby military equipment in Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, and a schedule that calls for maintaining an aircraft carrier nearby 270 days a year.

“We’ve diversified enormously, and it gives us a lot of options,” said a senior U.S. official. “We don’t have to rely on any single country.”

Cohen portrayed the decision as one made entirely by the U.S. military leadership. He said the U.S regional military commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni, had decided “he can carry out whatever he needs to carry out with the forces that are now there or will be [in the region] in the near future,” he said.

Like Albright, Cohen emphasized that the United States believes it has strong support from the Saudis. “We would hope the Saudis would continue to be as supportive as they have been,” he said.

On the eve of Cohen’s arrival, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan ibn Abdulaziz was quoted in the Saudi English-language newspaper, Arab News, as saying, “We are against attacking the Iraqis, as a nation and a people.”

But Cohen said he construed the prince’s comments to mean only that “they’d prefer a diplomatic solution. So would we.”

The development came on the third day of an eight-day Cohen trip that has shown uneven support for the idea of airstrikes.

Many allies have preferred to offer signals of support only privately--a fact that caused a delegation of U.S. senators to publicly scold NATO allies at a weekend meeting of Western military leaders in Munich, Germany.

Meanwhile, Cohen met with Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai and said he was thinking about Israeli requests for equipment to help Israelis respond to an attack that might follow airstrikes on Iraq. Cohen didn’t specify what the Israelis have sought, but he has previously said that he was considering requests for a variety of pieces of equipment.

On arrival in Jidda late Sunday evening, Cohen and Gen. Zinni met for 20 minutes with King Fahd at a royal palace. Afterward, the Defense secretary and his party held talks and dined with Sultan, the defense minister.

In a related development, Canada indicated Sunday that it might join the United States and Britain, which has consistently supported the U.S. in the current crisis, in a strike against Iraq.

President Clinton telephoned Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Sunday and asked for assistance in military transport and search-and-rescue capability in the Gulf, according to news reports in Toronto. Chretien had previously said that Canada would be willing to assist but promised Parliament that it could debate the matter before he would commit Canadian forces to action. That debate is expected today.

Also Sunday, former Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who was commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf War, said that Hussein may be prepared to take a strike by a U.S. air campaign. Schwarzkopf said the Iraqi leader may think that such a strike could lead to the splintering of the allied coalition that in 1991 forced him out of Kuwait, which he had invaded the year before.

“He may not mind a big strike. He may say, ‘It’s worth taking a big strike if I can get the [U.N. economic] sanctions [against Iraq] lifted,’ ” Schwarzkopf said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

Times staff writers James Risen in Washington and Craig Turner in New York and Andrew Van Velzen of The Times’ Toronto Bureau contributed to this report.

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