THE US moved a second aircraft carrier into the Gulf and flew more troops into Kuwait yesterday in a military build up aimed at deterring any threat from Iraq.
More than 200 soldiers from the US Army 1st Cavalry Division were bused from a Kuwaiti airport to an arsenal near Kuwait City where they began drawing tanks, armoured fighting vehicles and self propelled howitzer artillery.
Three thousand more troops are due to arrive in Kuwait today and deploy rapidly on a desert firing range 40 km from the Iraqi border. The troops will reinforce 1,200 already in Kuwait.
The formal mission of the troops is to provide training for Kuwaiti forces, but officials said they could be used in any new military action against Iraq.
The build up also includes the deployment in Kuwait of eight Stealth bombers, over 20 other US warplanes and Patriot missiles and B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
The aircraft carrier Enterprise turned into the Strait of Hormuz to join the Carl Vinson, already in northern Gulf waters. The Enterprise carries 55 combat aircraft plus 20 helicopters and fixed wing warplanes including electronic warfare aircraft.
The US navy now has seven ships in the region capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The build up is the latest of several mounted by Western forces in the region since the 1991 Gulf War ended Iraq's seven month occupation of Kuwait.
The fresh tension with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq started in August when Baghdad's forces intervened to help a Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.
Washington retaliated by firing 44 cruise missiles at air defence targets in south Iraq on September 3rd and 4th. UN observers said some of the missiles violated the terms of a UN created demilitarised zone on the Iraq Kuwait border.
A Kuwait official said yesterday tension with Baghdad had subsided slightly but Kuwait's "crisis" with Iraq was not over. The threat will stay as long as Saddam Hussein is in power," he said.
But Western diplomats said that without serious provocation the likelihood of a strike on Iraq was now slight.