U.S. Plans Doubling of Its Forces in Gulf

The United States on Friday began sharing highly sensitive intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs with the United Nations, as the White House agreed to nearly double the number of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region next month, according to U.S. officials.

The Pentagon is preparing to deploy as many as 50,000 troops, bringing the total to almost 100,000, Pentagon officials said.

Both steps will increase the pressure on the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in preparation for a tough new round of inspections that is set to begin in the new year, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

The U.S. intelligence shared with U.N. weapons inspectors Friday involved a few sites -- fewer than half a dozen -- suspected of being connected to chemical weapons production, U.S. officials said.

The hand-over of data is meant to test what happens to information provided by the United States -- and to see whether it falls into Iraqi hands before U.N. weapons inspectors can check out the facilities, a common problem in the past.

“We’re starting out cautiously,” said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity.

The new intelligence cooperation began as U.S. officials expressed growing concern about the fate of leading Iraqi scientists.

“We believe Iraq is taking steps to make people unavailable or less available,” a senior Bush administration official said.

Some scientists and engineers involved in the production of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or ballistic missiles may already have been imprisoned or put under a form of house arrest or protective custody, to cut them off both from U.N. inspectors and from defecting, the sources added.

Iraq’s top scientists are expected to be the centerpiece in the next phase of inspections, because the U.S. and the U.N. believe the arms experts can uncover what Washington insists are Iraq’s hidden weapons programs.

On Friday, U.S. officials refused to discuss unconfirmed reports from U.N. diplomats and Iraqi dissidents that almost three dozen key Iraqi arms experts are unaccounted for. According to at least one report, Iraq has issued false death certificates for scientists spirited out of sight.

U.S. officials would confirm only their tentative conclusion that some of the Iraqis they want the U.N. teams to interview are likely to be beyond the reach of inspectors.

“We have reports that scientists may have been hidden away, and we believe this is probably true,” said a well-placed official who requested anonymity.

U.N. sources also said they had heard reports of scientists being taken out of the country, being killed or going missing but hadn’t yet tested the Iraqis’ ability to produce specific experts.

“Sometimes those who are in jail are the easiest to produce,” said Ewen Buchanan of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.

Iraq has promised to meet the deadline for providing a full list of all personnel connected with its arms industry by the end of the month, Gen. Amar Saadi said Thursday in Baghdad.

The U.S. and the U.N. are still working out procedures for tracking down and interviewing scientists in January. They are also discussing the sticky issue of what would happen to those scientists -- and their families -- afterward.

President Bush, weighing in for the first time since a U.N. assessment Thursday, said Friday that Iraq’s weapons declaration was not encouraging because it was “a long way” from meeting the Hussein regime’s obligation.

“We expected him to show that he would disarm.... Yesterday was a disappointing day for those who have longed for peace,” Bush said after White House talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and top Russian and European Union officials on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

In a signal of the intensifying focus on Iraq, the White House also announced that the president was canceling a long-scheduled trip to Africa that was to have taken place Jan. 10-17.

A brief statement issued by the president’s spokesman cited “a combination of domestic and international considerations” and pledged that Bush would reschedule his visit in 2003.

“You have the need to monitor the situation in Iraq,” a White House official said. “We’re entering a new phase.”

The official also conceded that security in Africa, especially Kenya, was a concern.

The growing focus on war was also underscored when Bush met Friday with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who would lead U.S. forces in any invasion of Iraq, to endorse a proposal to double the U.S. military deployment in the Gulf.

“It’s all part of the keep-the-pressure-on-Saddam operation,” a senior administration official said, adding that a number of top Pentagon and other officials will be traveling to the region in January.

Rumsfeld is expected to sign the deployment order in the coming days, Pentagon officials said.

It is aimed at placing enough equipment and manpower in the region to shorten the lead time for any invasion to a matter of weeks.

“If [the president] decides to do something Feb. 1, you can’t wait till Jan. 15” to assemble the pieces, one Pentagon official said. “You need forces in place.”

The deployment is heavy on equipment, airpower and crews that provide logistics, maintenance and engineering support, officials said. Although some infantry troops are expected to be involved, major ground force deployments would come later.

“It’s more things than people,” another official said. The military already has about 400 aircraft at bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain, officials said. But the Air Force is expected to send additional warplanes, including Stealth bombers, which experts say would play a crucial role in the opening hours of an invasion.

Separately, about 30,000 National Guard members and military reservists have been alerted that they could soon be called to active duty, officials said.

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Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Esther Schrader and Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.