Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 9, 1991 TAG: 9103090276
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE LENGTH: Medium
Saudi Arabia, with Iraqi troops poised at its border, welcomed the war deployment of hundreds of thousands of allied troops and more than 1,000 planes. But permanent peacetime basing would be unprecedented in a region that has traditionally been highly suspicious of outside interference.
Donald Rice, the Air Force secretary, said no decisions had been made, but that he believed a limited U.S. air presence "might make sense" as part of a new security arrangement for the gulf states.
Secretary of State James Baker was meeting in Saudi Arabia on Friday with King Fahd and other Saudi officials to discuss postwar security for the region.
Thursday, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said the administration was "prepared to do more than in the past" to help maintain the security of gulf nations friendly to the United States. But he wouldn't comment directly on whether U.S. combat aircraft might be based there.
Rice said that besides the possible permanent basing of U.S. combat, reconnaissance or tanker aircraft in the gulf, the Bush administration also might consider more limited arrangements such as joint air exercises and training with gulf nations.
"We have the flexibility to provide any of a variety of kinds" of Air Force arrangements, he said in an interview with several reporters aboard a plane taking him to Langley Air Force Base for a homecoming ceremony for the first combat planes returning from the war.
Rice stressed several times that decisions would depend on the desires of the gulf states.
"The options are not limited to Saudi Arabia as far as I understand," he said. "I've heard suggestions of possible interest from the United Arab Emirates or Qatar or Bahrain."
Rice did not say how many U.S. aircraft and Air Force personnel might be left in the gulf.
Rice praised the Gulf War performance of the F-117A fighter bomber, which he said "emerged without a scratch" after bombing runs on some of the most heavily defended targets inside Iraq. The F-117A is the United States' most advanced fighter bomber, but Rice said the Air Force did not want to build more of the stealth planes.
"We're a generation ahead of that now," he said, in the development of a new tactical fighter known as the ATF that combines the F-117A's radar-evading capabilities with improved aerodynamics.
by CNB