Iraq Promises Kuwait Pullout : U.S. Skeptical; Bush Offers Saudis All Possible Aid : Mideast: Baghdad solidifies hold throughout the emirate but under growing pressure pledges to begin withdrawing as early as Sunday.

CAIRO — Iraq moved to consolidate its hold on the farthest reaches of Kuwaiti territory Friday, but it promised to begin withdrawing some of its troops as early as Sunday in the face of mounting international pressure against the invasion.

An estimated 100,000 Iraqi troops and 300 tanks were pushing through Kuwait’s southern oil fields to within 5 to 10 miles of the Saudi border, according to U.S. and Saudi sources. In Washington, President Bush warned that the United States will help “in any way we possibly can” if Iraq invades Saudi Arabia.

Most of the Iraqis were concentrated southwest of the Kuwaiti capital along the roads leading to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said.

But diplomatic sources in Saudi Arabia said there was no evidence that the troops were actually moving to cross the Saudi border.

Several officials in the Middle East as well as American officials said that they were skeptical about Baghdad’s withdrawal pledge--particularly because Iraq also vowed to prevent the Kuwaiti government from retaking power in the tiny, oil-rich emirate.

“We don’t know what their intentions are,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said, “One of our problems has been that (Hussein) hasn’t told anybody the truth in the last several weeks.”

“There will be no return to the bygone regime, now that the sun of pride and dignity has risen in Kuwait,” an Iraqi government spokesman said on Baghdad radio. Forces will be withdrawn “according to a timetable,” the spokesman said, “unless something appears that threatens the security of Kuwait and Iraq.”

On the second day of the invasion, a gray haze covered the Persian Gulf. As seen from the air, the haze was broken only by what looked like lighted match sticks on the ground--gas being flared off at onshore oil fields.

Telephone communications with Kuwait were severed throughout the day, but diplomats in Saudi Arabia said Kuwaitis fleeing the country across the Saudi border reported that some Kuwaiti troops were still entrenched in the outlying countryside.

Some reports of the first day’s fighting trickled out. According to Ceres Puzon, a Filipino worker in Kuwait whose apartment building was barely half a mile from a besieged Kuwaiti army camp, Iraqi shelling Thursday drove the Kuwaiti defenders into the desert.

A handful of them, she told relatives in Manila by telephone, sought shelter on the first floor of her building. Fearing that Iraqi guns would be trained on the structure, she broke off the phone call to go to a higher floor, hoping to escape any shrapnel.

News agencies in the Kuwaiti capital said that some shelling and gunfire continued in the city Friday. Heavy bombardment was reported at Kuwait’s main military barracks in the northern area of Shuwaikh and along the Persian Gulf coast less than 20 miles away.

A radio station that had been broadcasting messages from the dislocated government of Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah was knocked off the air, its last message an appeal to the Arab world on behalf of the people of Kuwait to “rush, rush to their help.”

Arab leaders, seeking to contain the crisis themselves, held another series of high-level contacts Friday and announced an Arab mini-summit Sunday in Saudi Arabia with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Egyptian television and Egypt’s official news agency reported that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein might also attend the summit, at the invitation of Jordan’s King Hussein, who flew to Baghdad for consultations early Friday.

“Fear and pain,” said one Texaco oilman boarding a flight from Sanaa, Yemen, to Saudi Arabia on Friday. “That’s how (Saddam Hussein) exercises power, and it works. Last week it was fear; this week it’s the pain.”

The American, who requested anonymity, said Texaco officials were concerned about a “small operation” that the oil company runs in a neutral zone between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, south of the Kuwaiti capital.

Amid reports of mounting Iraqi troop numbers in south Kuwait and a report that an Iraqi missile had exploded just across the Kuwaiti frontier in Saudi Arabia, a second U.S. aircraft carrier was being readied to head toward the Mediterranean Sea, supplementing Thursday’s dispatch of the carrier Independence toward the gulf from the Indian Ocean. An additional American assault ship is scheduled to sail for the region Monday, and France announced Friday that it was also dispatching a second warship to the gulf.

U.S. officials said the latest ship movements were not tied to the crisis in the Middle East. But White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the United States has informed its NATO allies that “we don’t rule out any military option and . . . everything is under consideration.”

Pressure to dislodge the brash Iraqi incursion mounted worldwide, as the Soviet Union joined with the United States in a strongly worded joint statement urging all nations to cut off arms shipments to Iraq and demanding that Iraq unconditionally and immediately withdraw its troops from Kuwait.

In the statement, hammered out by Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the superpowers characterized the Iraqi invasion as “brutal and illegal.”

“Today, we take the unusual step of jointly calling on the rest of the international community to join with us in an international cutoff of all arms supplies to Iraq,” said the U.S.-Soviet resolution.

Moscow, Baghdad’s primary weapons supplier, has already ordered a halt to all weapons shipments to Iraq, and moves to impose economic sanctions were gaining momentum throughout the world.

Five countries--Japan, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg--said they would join the United States, Britain and France in freezing Kuwaiti assets to prevent the Iraqis from seizing them, and Italy joined the Soviet Union in suspending arms shipments to Baghdad.

France and the United States have also frozen Iraqi assets, and Washington on Thursday announced a ban on imports of most Iraqi goods, including oil, although the Treasury Department on Friday night lifted a ban on Iraqi oil already en route to the United States. The Netherlands said it would freeze all Kuwaiti bank accounts.

In Cairo, exhausted Arab League foreign ministers, meeting late into the night for the second straight day, emerged Friday with a divided vote on a resolution condemning Iraq, breaking the Arab world’s two-day silence on the invasion.

Sudan, Jordan, Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Iraq’s strongest allies in the 21-nation Arab League, voted against the declaration, which also demanded the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi troops. Moderate Arab leaders had hoped to achieve a consensus on the resolution, and the Iraqi representative immediately dismissed it because it was not a unanimous declaration.

Still, in a region increasingly dominated by Iraq’s Hussein and his military might, moderate Arab diplomats considered the resolution a minor victory--particularly when coupled with similar strongly worded declarations from Egypt and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic and defense pact that includes Kuwait.

“The Arab League Council has decided to condemn the Iraqi invasion on Kuwait and rejects and does not recognize anything resulting from it,” the Arab League statement said.

“We condemn the bloodshed and the destruction of buildings, and we call on Iraq to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops. . . . Second, Iraq must stop trying to change the government in Kuwait by force and leave such internal issues to Kuwaiti people to decide by their own free will.”

Outside the meeting, hundreds of Kuwaitis who had been in Cairo on vacation before the invasion staged a demonstration, waving Kuwaiti flags and chanting, “With blood and our soul, we’ll defend Kuwait!”

Many Kuwaitis stood silently on the sidelines, tears streaming down their faces. “I can’t believe this happens from an Arab state,” said one oil company employee, who asked not to be identified. “It seems like Israel is far better than them. We didn’t expect such an act out of a country that Kuwait supported for more than 10 years with all its power and force. . . . We need a strong Arab army, and we shouldn’t let this incident pass by easily.”

Meanwhile, White House officials said that three oil companies now have reported 14 Americans missing in Kuwait. Some apparently have been taken by the Iraqis at the Shuaiba oil refinery to help run the refinery.

Fitzwater said Assistant U.S. Secretary of State John Kelly has demanded that all American citizens “be accounted for and freed as soon as possible.” The State Department has advised the 3,800 Americans living in Kuwait and an estimated 500 in Iraq to leave as quickly as possible.

But a diplomatic source said that officials do not believe they have any immediate reason to worry for the safety of Americans in Kuwait, and had concluded in any case that an evacuation at the present time would be impractical.

Times staff writer Nick B. Williams Jr., in the United Arab Emirates, contributed to this story.

REACTIONS OF KEY PLAYERS President Bush: The United States would be “inclined to help in any way we possibly can . . . The integrity of Saudi Arabia, its freedom, are very, very important to the United States.” James A. Baker III, Secretary of State: “I don’t think it’s useful to speculate with respect to questions regarding military action.” Toshiki Kaifu, Japanese Prime Minister: Iraqi invading forces “should go home immediately. . . Japan, too, must play a positive role to contain the fallout to the smallest possible limit.” Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Soviet Foreign Minister: “We have been assured that very soon the Iraqis will pull out their troops.” Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, Kuwaiti Ambassador to United States: “We want an immediate cease-fire, unconditional withdrawal and restoration of our government. This is a fixed position.”