Army Deploys More Soldiers To Gulf

The U.S. Army said Thursday it is sending 800 engineering and intelligence specialists to the Persian Gulf over the next several weeks.

The deployment is part of an accelerating buildup of U.S. air, land and naval forces in the Gulf area as President Bush contemplates a possible attack to disarm Iraq and remove the government of President Saddam Hussein.

The soldiers, based in Germany, are from the 130th Engineer Brigade, the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the 22nd Signal Brigade and the 3rd Corps Support Command. The Army said they would deploy before mid-February but was not more specific.

Already there are more than 50,000 American forces in the Gulf region, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last week signed orders for the deployment of tens of thousands more troops in the next few weeks.

The U.S. forces are operating from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other countries near Iraq.

But as CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, refusal so far by Turkey to open its military bases to a buildup of American troops is complicating and threatening to delay U.S. plans for war against Iraq.

There are currently 2,000 American servicemen in Turkey with the mission of patrolling the no-fly zone in northern Iraq.

But U.S. war plans call for moving an entire army division -- 12 to 15,000 troops and all their equipment -- through Turkey into northern Iraq to secure Iraq's valuable oil fields and to prevent civil war among Kurdish factions competing for power in a post-Saddam Iraq.

So far, Turkey has not even permitted the pentagon to survey Turkish bases to determine what improvements would be needed to handle the planned buildup.

Turkey recently elected a conservative Islamic government and U.S. officials are worried its parliament will not permit Turkish bases to be used for a war against Iraq. As long as Turkey refuses, U.S. officials say, it will be impossible to open up a northern front and that would significantly increase the risks in any war.

Jordan is also holding up approval to base American troops on its territory, reports Martin.

The U.S. wants to put special operations forces into Jordan from where they could be inserted into western Iraq to hunt for the scud missiles.

Which, in the last war, Saddam launched against Israel and which this time could be armed with chemical or biological warheads.

U.S. officials are confident Jordan will eventually come through, but a buildup, which over the next 6 to 8 weeks is designed to position 200,000 troops in the countries surrounding Iraq is not off to a smooth start.

Meanwhile, Iraq said Thursday it has cooperated with U.N. inspectors and that they have found no weapons of mass destruction in five weeks of searching, so their crucial report to the U.N. Security Council this month should favor Baghdad.

The inspectors, however, said it's too soon to draw conclusions about whether Iraq has complied with U.N. demands — as it must to avoid war with the United States.

The government-controlled Iraqi press also reproached the Security Council for tightening controls on imports to the country, saying council members were following the dictates of Washington and furthering "the mad U.S. attempts to wage aggression on Iraq."

Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison to the U.N. inspectors, said the inspections so far — visits to 237 sites in five weeks — gave credence to Baghdad's assertion it has no more banned weapons.

Amin said the inspections had been intrusive and included surprise visits.

"All those activities proved that the Iraqi declarations are credible and the American allegations and claims are baseless and they are lying for political reasons," Amin told a news conference.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes dropped nearly a half-million leaflets Thursday on southern Iraq asking Iraqis to tune in to American propaganda radio broadcasts.

The U.S. planes dropped about 480,000 leaflets over Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, and An Nasiriyah at about 5:15 a.m. EST, U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

The leaflets tell readers the radio frequencies on which they can hear U.S. broadcasts from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. each evening. The broadcasts, part of the U.S. military's psychological operations in preparation for a possible war with Iraq, come from EC-130E Commando Solo airplanes flying over Kuwait.

The Arabic-language broadcasts urge Iraqi soldiers to turn against Saddam's regime, accusing him of using soldiers as puppets for his own nefarious purposes. The broadcasts say Saddam builds luxurious palaces for himself while Iraqi people are sick and starving.

The leaflets dropped Thursday were in the southern no-fly zone patrolled by American warplanes to keep Saddam from attacking Shiite Muslims.