THE United States has begun a build up towards a possible further missile strike against Iraq following a series of incidents over the no fly zones in the north and south of the country.
Kuwait yesterday acceded to a US request to allow eight F1-17 Stealth fighter bombers to be based there, almost certainly for an imminent strike at Iraq. This followed the dispatch of two B52 bombers yesterday from their base in Guam towards the Persian Gulf. They were expected to use the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean as a stopover.
Two B-52s also took part in the first round of cruise missile attacks on Iraq last week.
The Stealth bombers are said to be capable of high precision attacks on anti aircraft defences and to be virtually invisible to Iraqi radar. This would mean that the risk to US pilots would be minimal, military experts said.
Further aircraft are also being held in readiness on two US carriers in the Persian Gulf.
The build up follows a number of actions by Iraq which are seen as defying the US warning to Baghdad not to try and repair the radar installations which were the main target of last week's strikes in the enlarged no fly zone. The Pentagon says as many as four radar sites may now be back in operation.
The US has also confirmed that two missiles were fired at a pair of F-16s which were patrolling the northern no fly zone near the Kurdish region which has been overrun by a faction backed by the President Saddam Hussein.
The Pentagon has said that in addition to the missile attacks on the US aircraft, an Iraqi MiG-25 jet flew towards the southern no fly zone and penetrated it. An Iraqi helicopter also penetrated the zone. Asked if these Iraqi actions could lead to further US retaliation, President Clinton said: "We will evaluate them on what they do, not what they say."
Mr Clinton is campaigning in the Midwest but remains in touch with the evolving situation.
The Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry, warned that the US would respond disproportion lately to Iraqi provocations.
"We have the resolve and they to protect our interests and to protect our air crews, and the responses that we make will be disproportionate with the provocations which were made against us," Mr Perry said.
A Pentagon official said President Saddam appeared to be misreading the US stance concerning Iraq. "I think he's made the miscalculation that we won't act because of the election. He miscalculates all the time."
But many observers here acknowledge that Mr Sad dam has made a spectacular gain by reasserting his authority over virtually the whole Kurdish region from which he has been excluded since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
The price he has paid has been the taking out of some of his antiaircraft defences and the enlargement of the no fly zone in the south to within 30 miles of Baghdad. The US administration claims this extension has seriously hampered the Iraqi President from planning any aggressive action towards neighbouring countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
He has also been placed in the "humiliating" position of being deprived of huge areas of airspace in his own country.