Officials consider anti-Iraq action

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite the outward opposition of Arab countries to a military strike against Iraq, the White House is confident the Arabs won't stand in the way of any U.S. action, President Clinton's top security adviser said yesterday.

Sandy Berger said that in any case, the United States is ready to go it alone if necessary.

The Arab nations, National Security Adviser Berger said on NBC's "Meet the Press," understand the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "In the end of the day, they are not going to impede our ability to do what's necessary," Berger said.

AP PHOTO U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks with Emir of Bahrain in Manama yesterday. Albright pressed ahead with her diplomatic offensive against Iraq.

The administration campaigned hard among allies over the weekend for support of strong sanctions, and possibly military retaliation, against Iraq for expelling American members of the U.N. weapons inspection team.

President Clinton on Saturday spoke to Russia's Boris Yeltsin, France's Jacques Chirac and Britain's Tony Blair, urging a united voice in confronting Iraq. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has been making the same pitch in a tour of Persian Gulf states and with the Russian foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov.

While support has been solid for stronger U.N. sanctions against the Baghdad government, France, Russia and the Arabs have resisted the idea of militarily punishing Saddam for his latest challenge to U.N. resolutions approved after the 1991 Gulf War.

Foreign Minister Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah of Kuwait, which Saddam occupied to spark the war, said yesterday his country does not support military action. The Kuwaiti cabinet issued a statement urging a diplomatic solution "so that the area could be spared the dangers of tension and instability, and the Iraqi people would not be subjected to more misery and suffering."

But on CBS' "Face the Nation," Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stressed that he was getting a different message from Kuwait's defense minister and that Albright was successfully building support in the region for U.S. policy.

"We have no doubt that at the end of the day they will be supporting whatever action we take," Albright's spokesperson, James Rubin, added on ABC's "This Week."

Defense Secretary William Cohen, also on ABC, said Kuwait and Saudi Arabia might not face immediate Iraqi invasion, but they fully understand the danger to their populations by Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs.

"We intend to intensify that apprehension on their part" by making clear that Saddam has the capability to unleash devastating weapons of mass destruction if the U.N. inspectors are kept out of the country, he said.

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