Bush Acts to Calm New War Fears : Mideast: Not planning a ‘son of Desert Storm,’ he says. But he stresses that Iraq must comply with U.N. inspection terms or risk renewed U.S. action.

President Bush sought to allay American concerns that the United States is moving toward war against Iraq, saying Thursday that he is not planning a “son of Desert Storm.”

But Bush used his strongest language yet to warn that he is prepared to dispatch warplanes to the Persian Gulf, if necessary, to enforce a U.N. cease-fire agreement flouted by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“There is too much at stake,” the President said in an interview with Latino journalists in Los Angeles. He vowed that Iraq now “must comply” with the U.N. terms, which call for U.N. teams to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. “And when a President makes a statement like that, he ought not to do it without being willing to back that up,” he said.

Bush made it clear that he was taken aback by the extent of public alarm provoked by reports of the prospective military action. He said he saw television footage of military families saying: “Oh, please, we don’t want to go through this again.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about here,” Bush said.

The President said efforts to gain access to the Iraqi facilities would not require “lots of troops” or “a whole ‘son-of-Desert Storm’ operation.” At most, “what we are talking about is accompanying helicopters with some air power. And we got a lot of air power there.”

The dual message from the White House seemed intended to convey both reassurance to the American public and a stepped-up threat to Iraq, as Bush noted pointedly that the U.S. military could be “very specific as we apply this air power.”

Baghdad has accused the United States of using the dispute over the U.N. inspections as a pretext for military action. But Bush told reporters earlier in the day that he is “not looking for a fight.”

He pledged, however, that if Hussein fails to “do what the U.N. is calling on him to do . . . he is going to find that we are prepared to use military action to see that he does comply.”

Bush was interviewed at the Four Seasons Hotel at the end of a day in which he had repeatedly deflected questions about Iraq. He said he was making his warning emphatic to make clear to Hussein that he “should not miscalculate again.” But he said his “gut feeling” is that the Iraqi leader will now comply with the terms of the cease-fire, which require him to destroy his weapons of mass destruction.

And at a fund-raising dinner later Thursday for Republican Sen. John Seymour, Bush declared: “No matter how bad he is, Saddam Hussein is not going to miscalculate again.”

Earlier, the United States and Kuwait took the first steps toward creating a security arrangement for the Gulf region when they signed a 10-year agreement permitting the placement of U.S. military hardware in Kuwait and allowing U.S. warships to use Kuwaiti ports. Although U.S. troops will rotate into Kuwait to train with local troops, there will be no permanent U.S. combat presence in the oil-rich emirate.

The agreement, signed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Sheik Ali al Salim al Sabah, the Kuwaiti defense minister, was the first such pact reached by Washington with a Gulf state since the U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait in February.

That pact follows the Administration’s announcement this week that it will send several Patriot missile batteries to Saudi Arabia to guard against any possible Iraqi missile or aircraft attacks.

U.S. defense officials hope the two moves mark the beginning of broader security arrangements between the Gulf states and the United States, which has an interest in regional stability and in unimpeded access to oil.

“We’ve said all along that one of the things that we hoped would emerge is better defense cooperation (to) improve the ability of the Persian Gulf states to defend themselves,” Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said Thursday. “So, don’t view the sale of Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia as simply a way for the Saudis to deal with the Iraqi Scud missile threat.”

Negotiations on defense agreements with the other Gulf states continue, but officials said no other pacts are expected soon.

The Gulf states are reluctant to embrace the United States or other Western powers as their protectors for domestic political and religious reasons. But with small populations and relatively insignificant armed forces, the Gulf sheikdoms--Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates--remain as exposed to attack as they were before the war against Iraq.

Despite the massive casualties incurred by the Iraqi military during the six-week war, Iraq’s military is still more than twice the size of the combined forces of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states.

Some analysts saw the Administration’s saber-rattling this week as a signal to the Gulf states that the United States has not abandoned them.

“The Gulfies were getting pretty nervous that the United States had finished its business and was now prepared to let Saddam get away with murder,” said Ken Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. “The Gulf states were afraid that we had turned tail and left for good. (The threat of American air power) will help reassure them.”

Katzman also suggested that the threat to send new forces to the region will help persuade the Gulf states to acquiesce in the positioning of U.S. military forces on their territory.

The Kuwait agreement calls for storage of tanks, artillery and ammunition in U.S.-maintained Kuwaiti warehouses. The Army Corps of Engineers will repair and upgrade two Kuwaiti airfields to make them compatible with U.S. warplanes.

There are now 1,500 Europe-based U.S. troops stationed temporarily in Kuwait to provide security and to assist in reconstruction efforts. But Pentagon officials said Thursday that these troops will return to their bases in Germany in the next few months.

Although the Gulf states can afford whatever military hardware the West will sell them, revenue derived from oil cannot buy security--from either external or internal threats. The very need to call for help from a 28-nation coalition last year proved that the Gulf Cooperation Council was incapable of defending the six oil-rich nations under its umbrella.

But most if not all of the Gulf states fear building larger armed forces because of the danger that the military could lead a revolt against the kings, sheiks and sultans of the Gulf. Since the 1950s, the monarchies in Libya, Egypt and Iraq have all been overthrown by or with the help of the local military.

Thomas McNaugher, a Brookings Institution military analyst and an Army reservist who spent five months in the Gulf during and after the war, said that the United States is unlikely to be drawn into new combat against Iraq but that the Administration has taken on an open-ended military commitment in the region.

“While nothing much will probably happen in this case, this is one more point in a long end game,” McNaugher said. “Saddam has an unerring ability to overstep and systematically enrage the outside world. This guy’s going to constantly push to the brink. We underestimated . . . his arsenal and his willingness to thumb his nose at us.”

Wright reported from Washington and Jehl from Los Angeles. Times staff writers John Broder in Washington and Frank Sotomayor in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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