By Rick Atkinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 1991; Page A01

Post time line

Allied combat forces, edging closer to a massive ground offensive, increased the tempo and boldness of their attacks north of the Saudi border yesterday, including a daring U.S. helicopter raid on an Iraqi bunker complex that snared up to 500 prisoners, U.S. officials said.

The intensified skirmishing came as Iraq announced that its foreign minister will return to Moscow "soon" with a reply to a Soviet peace proposal. Baghdad Radio said President Saddam Hussein had chaired a late-night meeting of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council, which agreed to send Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz back to the Kremlin "carrying the leadership's reply."

The broadcast disclosed neither Baghdad's answer to the proposal nor the precise timetable for Aziz's trip, but French officials warned -- without elaborating -- that Iraq had only until tonight to begin withdrawing.

U.S. and British officials already have criticized the Kremlin plan, presented to Aziz in Moscow on Monday. It reportedly calls for an immediate Iraqi withdrawal from occupied Kuwait while offering several guarantees such as the survival of Saddam and his regime. In a private cable to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev Monday night, President Bush questioned those assurances and said the proposal must be toughened with requirements that include a tight withdrawal timetable for Iraqi troops and an immediate freeing of allied prisoners of war.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in one of the few administration utterances on the war yesterday, said during a luncheon for the queen of Denmark, "One way or another, the army of occupation of Iraq will leave Kuwait soon. And so Kuwait will be liberated soon."

But the Soviet plan complicates what already had been momentous decisions for Bush on whether and when to launch a ground offensive. Added to the president's military and political considerations, including the prospect of much higher allied casualties, Bush must now contemplate the impact of a ground war on superpower relations and his desire to keep the international coalition against Iraq resolute and intact. The coalition frayed slightly yesterday with an Italian declaration that Moscow's initiative is "in line with the U.N. resolutions."

Bush, who met yesterday with his national security aides in a series of meetings, turned aside questions in public appearances, while spokesman Marlin Fitzwater answered reporters' queries on the conflict with only what he described as an "all-purpose no comment."

Senior U.S. military officers gave conflicting signals on the imminence of a major land attack. At the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, denied that yesterday's skirmishes represented the first phase of a ground campaign.

But in Saudi Arabia, Army Lt. Gen. Calvin Waller told reporters during a visit to a supply base that "it doesn't appear that it's going to be long" before the offensive begins.

The diplomatic maneuverings and relentless speculation about the ground war appeared to have no effect on Operation Desert Storm yesterday, as the allies flew 2,900 air sorties against targets in Iraq and Kuwait. U.S. helicopter and reconnaissance strikes appeared to indicate that the border combat zone is gradually deepening, with ground commanders confident in their ability to attack farther and farther into Kuwait and Iraq even in daylight.

In the boldest of yesterday's announced actions, two U.S. Army AH-64A Apache gunships flying with two OH-58 spotter helicopters attacked a warren of Iraqi bunkers at 2 p.m. (6 a.m. EST), destroying 13 to 15 of the structures, according to Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

An estimated 450 to 500 Iraqis -- roughly equivalent to a battalion -- then surrendered and were rounded up by American security forces, who searched the prisoners for weapons, herded them into large CH-47 Chinook helicopters and flew them to camps in Saudi Arabia. Few additional details were available, but the incident raises to more than 2,500 the number of Iraqi prisoners held in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Fifteen minutes before that fight, a unit identified by American officials only as "a U.S. company" -- typically about 130 soldiers -- encountered an Iraqi tank and artillery force. One U.S. soldier manning a Vulcan antiaircraft gun was killed by artillery fire and seven others were wounded; two U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles and the Vulcan were damaged. On the Iraqi side, five tanks and 20 artillery pieces -- the equivalent of more than a battalion -- were destroyed and seven soldiers were captured, Neal said.

In a third significant engagement, U.S. aircraft on Tuesday attacked a concentration of more than 300 vehicles dug in about 60 miles north of the Saudi border. The strikes lasted most of the day and into the night, with 28 tanks, 26 other vehicles, three artillery pieces and three ammunition storage areas reported destroyed, Neal said.

The recent fighting comes amid what U.S. commanders say is growing evidence that Iraq plans to use chemical weapons against any attack in an effort to slow the allies by forcing them to wear cumbersome protective gear. "This war will be chemical probably from the very first hour. I don't think the troops understand that yet," a U.S. military intelligence officer told pool reporters with the 7th Engineer Brigade.

Captured Iraqi troops and other intelligence sources indicate that Iraq has distributed chemical munitions to division commanders, possibly giving them authority to use such weapons, the pool reports said. The Iraqis may be putting cyanide in rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and other munitions, one officer said, citing strange puffs of gray smoke that have been spotted from exploding RPG rounds.

"I pray to God it's not going to happen. But yes, I'm convinced they're going to use chemicals," said Col. Samuel Raines, commander of the 7th Engineers.

Allied dominance in the skies above Iraq and Kuwait is now so thorough that no Iraqi aircraft has flown in 10 days and no Iraqi pilot has attempted a combat mission in more than three weeks, a hiatus that has "a significant impact on pilot proficiency and also on aircraft readiness," Neal said.

During the 24-hour reporting period that ended yesterday evening, allied pilots flew more than 900 missions against targets in the Kuwaiti theater and another 100 against Republican Guard units, all of whom are entrenched in southern Iraq. Another 100 sorties were flown by Scud missile hunters, including Air Force A-10s that destroyed two Scuds in western Iraq.

F-15 pilots patrolling in northwest Iraq spotted a Scud missile as it soared through the clouds toward Israel Tuesday night; the weather prevented an immediate attack, but B-52 bombers returned later in the evening with a bombardment that resulted in "large secondary explosions," Neal said.

Iraqi Capability Respected

Asked at the Pentagon whether hitting Scud sites with the huge bombers is not akin to killing a fly with a sledgehammer, Kelly replied, "My own personal opinion is that's a delightful way to kill a fly."

Although careful not to contradict an assertion Tuesday by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf that Iraq's military is on the verge of collapse, U.S. military officials yesterday cautioned against underestimating Iraq's fighting capacity. "They have suffered immeasurably by the air campaign," Neal said. "But I'm not ready to say that as an armed force, the Iraqis are ready to drop their weapons and come forward."

Iraqi Information Minister Latif Nassif Jassim blasted Schwarzkopf's statements, which he decried as "just another fabrication of this damned criminal's rotten mind." The general's remarks, Jassim suggested, were intended to "patch up the battered morale" of his troops.

Baghdad Radio also warned that the United States and its allies are "betting on a blitzkrieg" but "backing a loser."

Schwarzkopf unleashed his temper on some of his soldiers this week, reportedly reprimanding commanders for using excessive firepower in a raid earlier this week. An Army Apache accidentally fired a Hellfire missile at a Bradley, killing two infantrymen and wounding six others.

At least 100 Hellfires, which cost about $40,000 each and are designed for use against heavy tanks, were fired at a group of trucks, observation posts and scattered infantry teams, according to officers familiar with the incident. Schwarzkopf recently reinforced an earlier order to field commanders, warning them not to squander their most-lethal tank killing ammunition on secondary targets. Although the size of the large Hellfire volley did not contribute to the "friendly fire" deaths, officers said, the indiscriminate firing underscored the problem of fratricide.

Warnings of Fakes Issued

U.S. military officials in Riyadh also have alerted allied field commanders to be wary of fakes and ruses by Iraqi troops pretending to surrender, according to an Associated Press report.

As part of the intense diplomatic maneuvering yesterday, a Soviet spokesman took pains to suggest that relations between the Kremlin and White House remained cordial despite Bush's criticism of the Gorbachev plan. "We're not considering his response a negative one," Gorbachev spokesman Vitaly Ignatenko said. "It seems to me that the reaction of President Bush is a right one, and we comprehend it perfectly well."

China added its voice to those calling for a swift Iraqi withdrawal. After Iraq's deputy premier, Saadoun Hammadi, met with Premier Li Peng during a surprise one-day visit to Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said Li "urged Iraq to seize the opportunity to take immediate and concrete measures and actions to withdraw its troops from Kuwait."

Saudi and U.S. officials also continued to ponder the dimensions of the large oil slick hovering off the Saudi coastline. Although the slick appears much smaller than originally announced and seems now to pose no danger to water purification and industrial plants, officials said the spill remains a significant threat to birds, fish and other marine life.

"You have different areas where the oil has impacted quite severely, where there is heavy oil on the sand," with dead birds and other animals washing ashore, said U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Paul Milligan, who is participating in the cleanup effort.

Saudi officials estimated last month that the spill contained 11 million barrels, but satellite photographs now indicate that 1.5 million to 2 million barrels are floating in Saudi waters, Abdulbar Gain, president of the Saudi Meterological and Environmental Protection Administration, told reporters in Dhahran. The estimate does not, however, include oil that is still "in the war zone" off the Kuwaiti and Iraqi coast, making it impossible to calculate how much crude has poured into the Persian Gulf since the war began Jan. 17.

Staff writers Ann Devroy, David Hoffman and John E. Yang in Washington; Glenn Frankel in London; Molly Moore in Saudi Arabia; and staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.