Who's In Charge There?

By Bruce W. Nelan

The commander of all U.S. forces in the gulf, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, firmly denies he has "any disagreement whatsoever with any agreement" between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. "Storm-in' Norman," as some of his detractors call him, dismisses published reports that he complained to the Pentagon about a Saudi request for veto power over future American action. He adds, "I participated in the formulation of the agreement."

True enough, but the basis for the deployment of nearly 100,000 U.S. troops -- so far -- on Saudi territory is defined in a memorandum just three pages long. Not only is the document "extremely general," according to those who have read it, but it is being kept secret at the request of the Saudi government. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who negotiated it in Jidda last month, described it as a "sort of" status-of-forces agreement, something that usually takes the form of a treaty.

In a Saudi draft, the memo named King Fahd overall commander, with Schwarzkopf and the Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, as his deputies. Schwarzkopf objected -- as did George Bush -- and it was rewritten to establish separate, parallel commands: U.S. troops in one, Saudi and allied Arab forces in the other.

The U.S. could not take command of Saudi forces and was unwilling to subordinate American troops to them, so Schwarzkopf was given a divided command. At a press conference later, Schwarzkopf explained, "This is not NATO, O.K.? There is not one supreme commander, and there doesn't need to be." Added White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: "The chain of command has been working very well."

The new military relationship with Saudi Arabia has indeed gone smoothly so far, but its vagueness is causing some uneasiness on Capitol Hill. "There are a number of loose ends to be tied up," says Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Senator Sam Nunn says flatly, "We cannot give the Saudis a veto on operations."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Claiborne Pell has formally asked the Pentagon to send over copies of any exchanges of letters or oral agreements with gulf governments. That includes not only Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but also Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, all of which have agreed to base U.S. warplanes on their soil.

Bush has repeatedly said he ordered American forces to Saudi Arabia only to deter Iraqi aggression and, if necessary, repel it. For defensive purposes, the military coordination at most levels seems workable. Schwarzkopf and the Saudi commander, Lieut. General Khalid bin Sultan, meet several times a day, as do their main deputies. U.S. ground troops have been assigned to a sector along the gulf and south of Kuwait, while 30,000 Saudi and Islamic troops are deployed west of U.S. positions and in the far north, a thin line between the Americans and the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders. U.S., Saudi and British fighter planes are monitored day and night by AWACS radar aircraft, which feed their information to an air-control station at Dhahran. The ground station relays flight instructions to all the fighters, which maneuver in assigned patrol sectors.

"On balance, the defensive issues have been pretty well worked out," says General George Crist, one of Schwarzkopf's predecessors as head of Central Command, which was originally set up as the Rapid Deployment Force and which planned Operation Desert Shield. Many of the questions about a potential attack have not been addressed because Crist contends, "I don't think the Administration is clear what it wants to do."

Senior U.S. officials reply that any counterattack on Iraq would be mounted almost exclusively by aircraft and missiles. U.S. and allied ground forces would be ordered to hold their positions -- a mission that does not require extensive coordination.

Because General Khalid spoke publicly about the need for consultations on future action, it was widely assumed that Saudi Arabia might be reluctant to contemplate an attack on Iraq if sanctions fail. A senior Administration official in Washington dismisses that notion. "They urge us almost every day to go in and kick Saddam Hussein out," he says. "The truth is that there's not much consultation required. Anything we need to do, we can do." In a month or so, when the U.S. completes its military buildup, Washington will easily gain Saudi approval if it intends to mount an attack on Iraq. All it would require is a nod from King Fahd to the man who, in effect, commands Saudi as well as U.S. troops: President Bush.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame and Bruce van Voorst/Washington