War Could Be Delayed by Turkey’s Refusal

As the Pentagon worked Monday on an alternative plan for attacking Iraq from the north without Turkey’s help, senior defense officials said putting a new strategy in place could delay war until late March or early April.

With only second-best options to choose from after the Turkish parliament rejected a proposal to base 62,000 heavily armed U.S. troops in Turkey for an assault on Iraq, the Bush administration continued to press Ankara on Monday to reverse the decision.

But as Turkey signaled that it is unlikely to revisit the issue for a week or more, the Pentagon scrambled to put together options that could be quickly executed.

One proposal the Pentagon is considering would scrap plans to deploy the armored 4th Infantry Division from Turkish soil. Instead, tens of thousands of light infantry soldiers would be airlifted to Kurdish-ruled northern Iraq, and the military would rely on air power instead of tanks to destroy Iraqi heavy equipment.

As the Pentagon refined Plan B “to the nth degree,” according to a senior defense official, dozens of ships bearing the 4th Infantry Division’s tanks and other equipment floated off Turkish shores in the Mediterranean Sea, awaiting a decision.

Pentagon planners insist that an attack on Iraq would include both a southern and a northern front even if Turkey’s decision stands, and they sent deployment orders Monday to two new Army divisions. If Turkey at least allows the use of its airspace for transporting combat troops, some officials say novel routes and staging pacts with unlikely partners -- such as Cyprus and Jordan -- might suffice. Yet even if an alternative plan goes smoothly, putting it into action would probably delay war for a few weeks and probably make it riskier, senior defense officials said on condition of anonymity.

A delay of a few weeks would push U.S. war plans beyond the ideal weather “window” the Pentagon had hoped to operate in, making it more likely that troops using chemical-biological warfare suits will have to fight in hot weather in Iraq’s desert climate.

Military strategists say Turkey’s decision could push Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who heads the U.S. Central Command, to fight two kinds of war at once -- one with a smaller group of lightly armed troops in the north and one using tanks and heavy forces in the south.

That strategy was proposed in early war planning last summer, military analyst Loren Thompson said, but became Plan B after Army advocates’ more traditional approach won out. “What’s happened now, in the case of a northern front, is that Gen. Franks is being forced into a heavier reliance on air power and a reduced reliance on ground forces,” said Thompson, an analyst for the Lexington Institute, a public policy group in Arlington, Va. “This is the way military transformation usually happens, under pressure of military circumstance.”

A northern front is considered critical for several reasons: to divide the Iraqi military and force it to fight on two fronts; to keep quarreling Turks and northern Iraqi Kurds separated; and to reach Baghdad more easily than from the south, where river crossings and marshes pose obstacles.

Marine Gen. James L. Jones, the top U.S. commander in Europe, described the Turkish parliament’s decision as “not absolutely critical to [the war’s] success but ... an important component of it.”

“I don’t think it’s absolutely a showstopper in terms of whether you have a northern front or not,” he told reporters in Stuttgart, Germany.

A wide range of Pentagon officials and analysts interviewed agreed that a revised plan for a northern front would probably include fewer than the 62,000 troops -- including special operations forces and air units -- that the U.S. had proposed sending through Turkey.

Some estimate that a light force of as few as 10,000 troops could be sent into northern Iraq, although defense officials insist that logistically a much larger force could be airlifted to the region.

Among the units that could be used are the 101st Airborne Division from Ft. Campbell, Ky., defense officials said.

Another option, requiring no airstrips, would be to use the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, and elements of the 82nd Airborne, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C., which can parachute in all their soldiers and equipment.

Still another plan being considered, mentioned by one analyst on condition of anonymity, would be to use the 4th Infantry Division soldiers as a light force stripped of most of their heavy equipment. Those forces would be complemented by Army Rangers and special operations forces, including units from the 5th Special Forces Group from Ft. Campbell.

Whichever option is chosen, the military would probably fly some troops of the 3rd Infantry Division in Kuwait -- who would leave their heavy equipment behind -- to airfields seized by special operations teams, Thompson said. Those soldiers -- and possibly other, lighter forces, if Turkey refuses to allow the U.S. use of its airspace to transport troops -- would have to make a perilous flight over Iraqi territory to reach their forward bases.

Their transport would probably be preceded by surveillance and radar-jamming planes to monitor and disable antiaircraft batteries, and then by fighters and bombers that would pave the way with an air assault.

The White House noted Monday that the U.S. will reexamine its proposed multibillion-dollar aid package to Turkey in light of Saturday’s parliamentary vote.

“Turkey is reviewing its options, and the United States is doing the same,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. He conceded that there is “no question” that a second front against Iraq “would be preferable to the alternative.”

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States would continue to discuss the issue with Turkey in the spirit of “strong friendship” and the “strategic partnership” between the two nations.

Despite the uncertainty over Turkey, the Pentagon continued its already massive buildup of troops in the region Monday by calling up both the 1st Armored and the 1st Cavalry divisions to the Persian Gulf.

The 1st Cavalry, based at Ft. Hood, Texas, is a large mechanized force with 17,000 soldiers and 254 tanks, 281 Bradley fighting vehicles and 54 artillery systems. It already has a helicopter battalion in the gulf. The 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, has 14,000 soldiers, 168 M-1A1 tanks and 173 Bradley fighting vehicles.

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Times staff writers Richard Boudreaux in Ankara, Henry Chu in Stuttgart, and Edwin Chen and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.