CLINTON `PREPARED TO ACT' IN IRAQ SENDS 3,000 TROOPS, 129 PLANES TO GULF All Editions.=.2 Star B. 2 Star P. 1 Star Early

President Clinton declared Wednesday that he was "prepared to act" forcefully to end Iraq's defiance of United Nations weapons inspections, authorizing a new buildup of military forces in the Persian Gulf as U.N. officials evacuated most weapons inspectors and relief personnel from Ba...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
Main Author By BRADLEY GRAHAM and JOHN M. GOSHKO, Washington Post News Service
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bergen County, N.J North Jersey Media Group Inc 12.11.1998
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WASHINGTON
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Summary:President Clinton declared Wednesday that he was "prepared to act" forcefully to end Iraq's defiance of United Nations weapons inspections, authorizing a new buildup of military forces in the Persian Gulf as U.N. officials evacuated most weapons inspectors and relief personnel from Baghdad. The Pentagon dispatched 129 additional land-based warplanes and 3,000 more Army soldiers to the region, one day after accelerating deployment of an aircraft carrier and a Marine amphibious group. The extra forces constitute approximately a doubling of U.S. military strength in the gulf region, and they come close to the enormous firepower massed there during the last armed confrontation with Iraq last winter. As the likelihood of military action appeared to mount, more than 100 weapons inspectors working for the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) left Baghdad for Bahrain in a hastily assembled convoy of buses, jeeps, and trucks. UNSCOM's executive director, Richard Butler, said in New York that he had decided to pull the inspectors out as "a precautionary measure" after conferring Tuesday night with A. Peter Burleigh, acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.