The Gulf "Arrows To Our Chests"

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

December was the cruelest month in the Persian Gulf. It brought attacks by Iran and Iraq on at least 29 commercial ships, the highest recorded monthly number since the tanker war began. At the gulf's northern end, the seven-year- old war between the two Islamic rivals threatened to take a menacing turn as Tehran boasted of its ability to produce chemical weapons and a long-range missile. Vowed Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hussein Mousavi: "The government is committed to allocating its full potential to the war effort."

Those words hardly comforted the leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which met last week in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh to coordinate defense strategies. The six -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- fear that they will be drawn ever more deeply into the conflict. Iran has already launched Chinese Silkworm missiles against Kuwait. At the summit's opening, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd said the Iranians were "pointing their arrows to our chests instead of helping us to liberate Jerusalem from Zionist domination. There is no reasonable justification for this other than the desire for expansion."

To counter Iranian aggression, the gulf council reportedly raised the possibility of Egyptian military assistance. The entire council, except for Oman, had broken ties with Cairo when it made peace with Israel in 1979. Those relationships have now been restored. Next week Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has spoken of the "indivisible security" of his country and the gulf, will visit the region. Egyptian officers already train pilots and antimissile personnel in Kuwait. Although Cairo is not ready to station troops ( in the gulf, the renewed solidarity between Egypt and the Arab states sends a cautionary signal to Tehran.

While still calling for a negotiated solution to the war, the summit communique accused Tehran of "prevaricating" over United Nations Resolution 598, which calls for a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq. The council demanded that the U.N. Security Council put into effect the arms embargo that the resolution provides for in the event of intransigence.

All the members of the U.N. Security Council, including China and the Soviet Union, signed a statement two weeks ago saying they were ready to impose an embargo. The Soviets had previously urged that the U.N. be given more time to negotiate with Tehran, while China had been supplying it with the Silkworms. Work on a draft of the actual embargo resolution is expected to begin this month.

The Reagan Administration, meanwhile, says it is willing to study a proposal by the Soviet Union to enforce the embargo with a U.N. naval blockade of the gulf. But the U.S. fears that the lengthy negotiations required to organize such a fleet may interfere with the undertaking of an embargo. Said White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater of the Soviets proposal: "We'll sit down and talk about enforcement measures. But we are slightly suspicious of any measure that tends to increase their involvement and decrease ours." That sentiment was just one more reminder of the larger interests at stake in the Iran-Iraq war.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Nancy Traver/Washington