The USS Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka, Japan, is within a week's sail of Iraq

WASHINGTON, December 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. is poised to begin a rapid and visible buildup of forces in the Gulf early next month with 50,000 combat troops, aircraft, armor and tens of thousands of reservists, The Washington Post said Friday, December 20, quoting top defense officials.

The deployment will also include tens of thousands of reservists and will give U.S. President George W. Bush the option to start the war on Iraq in late January or early February, the officials said.

The war would come after January 27, when U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix provides the U.N. Security Council his first substantive report on Iraq's weapons declaration.

U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell said Thursday, December 19, that Iraq's declaration on its weapons of mass destruction represents a material breach of U.N. resolution 1441.

He stressed that the world would not wait for ever for Iraq to comply with the resolution, warning that Iraq would be disarmed by force if necessary.

"This declaration fails totally to move us in the direction of a peaceful solution," Powell claimed.

Threatening war, Powell said Baghdad is "close to the day when it will have to face [grave] consequences."

"If war comes, the only thing I would say about the nature of that conflict is that it will be done in a way that would minimize the loss of life, and it will be done to be accomplished in as swift a manner as possible," he claimed.

A senior U.S. defense official told The Washington Post that the U.S. has been moving heavy military equipment for months to the Gulf in a low key effort to avoid alarming the international community and creating the impression that the administration had prejudged the U.N. arms inspection process.

"But without a doubt, within the next week or so, you'll see more muscle movements than you've seen up to now," the official said.

"I think you're going to see a strategy change to one of demonstrated resolve, if not overt coercion."

In a related development, Turkey has allowed the United States to inspect a certain number of its airbases and ports ahead of a possible military operation against Iraq, the Turkish Radikal newspaper reported Friday.

Formal authorization for site surveys was given on Wednesday, December 18,  and concerns military airbases at Diyarbakir and Gaziantep in the southeast of the country and Malatya in the east, the paper said.

Inspections, likely to start next week, will also take in the Mediterranean ports of Antalya and Mersin.

U.S. specialists will examine whether the airports can accommodate large transport aircraft, such as C5 Galaxy planes, and whether warships can use the harbors.

Ankara opposes the use of force against Iraq, but as the United States' main regional ally it is likely to go along with military action, provided it receives international backing, according to observers.

On Wednesday, the Turkish armed forces for the first time acknowledged they were actively preparing for a possible war in the region, while denying they had deployed thousands of reinforcements along the border with Iraq.

In Washington, defense officials said there was far more heavy equipment in the region than has been reported, even with the Pentagon acknowledging the presence of about 60,000 troops and 400 aircraft at bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain.

Two 62,000-ton cargo ships, the USNS Watson and the USNS Charlton, sailed into the Gulf without fanfare within the past 10 days, another official said.

Statistics provided by the Pentagon show that cargo ships have moved almost 1.6 million square feet of material from the U.S. and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to the Gulf since October 1, including 1,290 20-foot containers loaded with ammunition, 18,130 tons of ammunition not in containers, tanker trucks, helicopters, bridge sections and watercraft, said the paper.

But movement from the U.S. of fighter wings and heavy ground divisions, and the potential redeployment of aircraft carriers from U.S. ports, will be far harder to conceal than the departures of the cargo ships, because they will have immediate impact on thousands of families and dozens of communities, officials said.

U.S. aircraft carrier USS Constellation

The propositioning that has taken place to date, another defense official said, was designed to reduce the time necessary to assemble an invasion force from four to six months to four to six weeks or less.

The official said 200,000 to 250,000 reservists could be necessary, not only to support a military campaign, but also to fulfill security missions at bases in the United States that did not exist during the 1991 Gulf War.

Analysts inside and outside the government expect next month's buildup to use Air Force C-17 and C-5 wide-body airlifters and 41 cargo ships from the Military Sealift Command to move armored, mechanized and air-mobile Army Divisions based in the United States and Germany.

A brigade from the 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, Ga., is already in Kuwait, and the division's commander said his entire force was ready to deploy if called.

Army officials in Europe are also assuming that forces from the 1st Armored Division and the 1st Infantry Division, based in Germany, will deploy, in addition to the Southern European Task Force, an airborne brigade based in Italy.

The 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., is also likely to deploy with dozens of Apache helicopter gunships and Black Hawk troop transports.

The buildup is also expected to involve elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, with 17,500 troops, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The Air Force is expected to move F-117 stealth fighters, which played a critical role in the opening of the 1991 Gulf War, from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to Al Jaber air base in Kuwait.

The Air Force has already signaled that it intends to use its other stealth aircraft, the B-2 bomber, from new maintenance shelters on Diego Garcia and from bases in Britain. B-52 and B-1 bombers also would fly from Diego Garcia and Britain.

The Navy already has two aircraft carriers deployed, with the USS Constellation in the Gulf and the Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean.

The USS Kitty Hawk, based in Yokosuka, Japan, is within a week's sail of Iraq.

But the Navy could have as many as six carriers in the region fairly quickly, most likely basing three in the Red Sea and three in the Gulf.

There are 50 fighter aircraft on each carrier, and each aircraft can strike as many as six targets per flight.

One critical aspect of the U.S. military's buildup to date in the Gulf is the presence of numerous headquarters units.

While all but about 40 personnel from the U.S. Central Command have returned from Qatar to their headquarters in Tampa after a war-gaming exercise called Internal Look, all of Central Command's mobile headquarters equipment remains operational in Qatar, said the Washington Post.

The headquarters of the Army's 5th Corps deployed from Germany to Kuwait in October, around the time that the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters deployed from Camp Pendleton to Kuwait.

The Central Command's Army, Navy, Air force and Marine component commanders are all now deployed in the theater.