Won’t Retreat on Jan. 3 Deadline for Talks, Bush Insists : Gulf crisis: President says he is considering seeking congressional authority ‘to take offensive action’ against Iraq. Baghdad is pessimistic over peace prospects.

WASHINGTON —  President Bush acknowledged Friday that he mishandled his initial proposal for direct meetings with Iraq on the Persian Gulf crisis but said he is unwilling to step back from his insistence that they occur by Jan. 3.

He also said he is considering seeking specific authority from Congress “to take offensive action.” But a senior White House official said Bush is unlikely to seek such approval unless he could count on an overwhelming endorsement, which the White House feels is now uncertain.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraqi officials are pessimistic that any talks with Washington will take place.

“We think President Bush has retreated from the idea of talks. He is resorting to war,” a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

On Nov. 30, the day after the U.N. Security Council set a Jan. 15, 1991, deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait, Bush proposed that Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz visit Washington and that Secretary of State James A. Baker III travel to Iraq to see Saddam Hussein.

Baker, Bush had said, was ready to travel on any “mutually convenient” day between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15. However, when Iraq suggested Jan. 12 for Baker’s visit, Bush responded that that is too close to the 15th and said Jan. 3 is the latest acceptable date.

“I wish now that I had been a little more explicit in my first announcement on what I meant by ‘mutually convenient dates’ ” for the exchange of visits, Bush said at a news conference. “But I was not then and am not now prepared to have this man (Hussein) manipulate the purpose of the secretary of state’s visit.”

The inability of Washington and Baghdad to agree on dates for the two visits has put Bush in a bind: In proposing the exchange of envoys, Bush said he is willing to go the extra mile to avoid bloodshed. But by refusing to let Baker meet with Hussein after Jan. 3, the President risks appearing intransigent.

Asked whether Hussein’s refusal to see Baker by Jan. 3 would mean there would be no meetings, Bush said: “I don’t like to draw deadlines in the sand here. But there’d have to be some compelling reason for me to change it because I don’t want to move this up against the United Nations deadline.

“That deadline is real,” he said, adding that Iraqi forces must be “totally out, totally out” by then.

In acknowledging that he is considering asking Congress in January to authorize “offensive action,” Bush sought to avoid angering members of the House and Senate who have encouraged him to put the issue before them. Congressional allies have argued that a display of strong support would send a clear signal to Hussein.

However, White House officials fear that such a vote would be risky because Congress could instead thwart the President by recommending that he give economic sanctions more time to force an Iraqi withdrawal--or by simply giving him a less-than-overwhelming vote of approval.

For that reason, officials said that despite Bush’s comments, he is no closer to taking such an approach than he was several weeks ago when Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) first proposed it.

Speaking with reporters on a sun-drenched White House lawn before leaving by helicopter to spend the weekend at Camp David, Md., Bush sought to blame Hussein for the failure to reach an agreement on dates for the proposed visits.

“We’ve offered 15 dates, and he ought to get moving and do something reasonable if he really wants to move for peace,” Bush said, stressing that he is trying “to show flexibility” but that Iraq has proposed only one date for Baker’s visit.

“In offering to go the extra mile for peace, however, I did not offer to be a party to Saddam Hussein’s manipulation,” the President said Friday, reading from a written statement.

Referring to the numerous meetings the Iraqi president has held with foreign visitors, Bush continued:

“Saddam Hussein is not too busy to see, on short notice, Kurt Waldheim, Willy Brandt, Muhammad Ali, Ted Heath, John Connally, Ramsey Clark, and many, many others on very short notice.

“And it simply is not credible that he cannot, over a two-week period, make a couple of hours available for the secretary of state on an issue of this importance unless, of course, he is seeking to circumvent the United Nations deadline.”

The United States is intending to use the proposed meetings not for negotiations but as a last opportunity to insist that all Iraqi troops be withdrawn from Kuwait by the Jan. 15 deadline or face the use of force to remove them. But the concern within the Administration is that on Jan. 12, Hussein could tell Baker in Baghdad that three days are not sufficient to carry out the withdrawal of Iraqi troops.

The first of the two visits--that of the Iraqi foreign minister to Washington--”is on hold,” Bush acknowledged Friday. The Iraqis had proposed that it take place Monday--a date to which the Administration did not object as long as Hussein would see Baker on a follow-up visit by Jan. 3.

In his news conference, Bush reiterated his concern about Hussein’s chemical weapons arsenal and his potential for developing nuclear weapons.

“Any arrangement that is going to keep the rest of the world happy will have to address itself to this unconventional war capability of Saddam Hussein. Anybody that will take the reckless action he has taken militarily against a neighbor must be contained in this era when we’re all concerned about nuclear proliferation,” the President said.

Meanwhile, Hussein said Iraq is prepared for combat.

“If the enemies want to push the situation toward a military showdown, we shall, with the blessing of God, win and we shall walk over their dead bodies and their heads,” he said, according to accounts published Friday.

While Bush complained about Iraq’s refusal to accept any of the dates he suggested for Baker’s visit to Baghdad, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told a congressional hearing that he sees “absolutely no indication” that sanctions or other pressures are lessening Hussein’s determination.

“Patience,” Cheney told the House Armed Services Committee, “is not producing results.”

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraqi forces “continue to pour into the Kuwait theater of operations,” which encompasses Kuwait and southern Iraq. The troops number more than 500,000, and there are also 4,000 tanks, 2,500 personnel carriers and other armored vehicles and 2,700 artillery pieces, he said.

U.S. forces throughout the gulf region number more than 260,000, with another 2,000 arriving daily--a rate of increase that will double in the weeks ahead in line with Bush’s Nov. 8 decision to raise the U.S. troop strength to about 400,000 personnel, Powell told the committee.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), the committee chairman, asked whether “we’ve created a use-it-or-lose-it force in the Persian Gulf”--one so large that it must go to war because it cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Powell acknowledged that sustaining the force would be difficult over the long run, but he said it should pose no problem over the next few months.

Powell also denied that the Administration is eager to bring the confrontation to a head before February because winter sandstorms and other adverse weather conditions later on would hamper the United States’ ability to fight a desert war and use air power.

“We’re not going to go to war based on weather forecasts,” Powell said.

He conceded that weather is “a factor,” but he added that “those who are for waiting and those who are for going ahead as soon as possible should not use weather as a basis for making that decision. The stakes are much too important just to hang arguments on the basis of ‘It’s just too cold,’ or ‘It’s just too hot.’ ”

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Williams from Baghdad. Times staff writer Michael Ross, in Washington, also contributed to this story.