IRAQIS SHIRKING DEMANDS : MISSILES STILL BEING MOVED; STRIKE LOOMS.

Byline: Philip Shenon The New York Times

Clinton administration officials said Sunday that Iraq had still not met all the terms of an American ultimatum delivered to Baghdad this month and that, as a result, there was still the possibility of a devastating American military strike on Iraq.

The officials said that an Iraqi promise last week to stop firing on American warplanes was welcome but did not go far enough, and that the Iraqis had so far ignored American demands that they stop moving and attempting to hide mobile missile launchers that could threaten American pilots over southern Iraq.

While the officials would not detail what other terms of the ultimatum had not been met by Iraq, they said that the United States had demanded additional moves by the Iraqi military to limit the use of air defense sites in southern Iraq and to guarantee the safety of American planes policing the expanded southern no-fly zone.

``We've basically made it clear to Saddam what constitutes a lack of threat,'' said a Pentagon official, speaking on condition that he not be identified. The official said that the Iraqi announcement last week that it would no longer fire on ``our aircraft, if acted upon, clearly helps reduce tension, but it doesn't entirely remove the threat.''

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili, noted the Defense Department's continuing concern about Iraqi intentions when he said Sunday that ``the intelligence is in fact mixed about what Saddam Hussein is doing with his missile sites'' in southern Iraq.

``We see the missile sites still there,'' he said on the ABC News program ``This Week,'' referring to the surface-to-air missile sites that have threatened American planes policing the southern no-fly zone that was expanded this month by thousands of square miles. ``We see them moving around, trying to hide them from us.''

At the same time, Shalikashvili confirmed that the Iraqis apparently had so far met one important requirement of the American ultimatum by halting the repair of air-defense sites damaged in two earlier American strikes this month. ``We have not seen in the last few days any effort to reconstruct them,'' he said.

Asked Sunday in Kuwait if there would be additional strikes on Iraq, Defense Secretary William Perry replied, ``Yes, that is still a possibility.'' He said that ``we cannot rely on Saddam Hussein's promises.''

Perry was in the Persian Gulf emirate to seek Kuwaiti approval for the deployment of an additional 3,000 American ground troops there to protect Kuwait from the threat from Iraqi attack. On Friday it was announced that 5,000 troops would be sent, but Pentagon officials lowered the figure Sunday to 3,000.

The Kuwaitis did not immediately approve the American request, which Clinton administration officials acknowledged was an embarrassment, and which the administration's Republican critics took as a sign of a deep rift between the United States and its Arab allies.

``If the country you're trying to defend tells you they won't accept the troops to defend them because they don't agree with you, that there's a danger,'' said House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., appearing on the NBC program ``Meet the Press.'' ``I think this is a typical muddle, with no consultation, no explanation and a fair amount of money being spent and lives being risked.''

The Clinton administration said that the Kuwaitis were delaying a decision on the movement of the 3,000 soldiers because they were angered that the deployment was announced Friday before an official request was made to the Kuwaiti government.

Shalikashvili said that the Kuwaiti government was ``meeting on that issue and I expect that they will let us know very shortly that they will be delighted to receive those troops.''

Asked about the Kuwait deployment, President Clinton said Sunday that the decision to send the troops was made public ``before we had done our regular consultation and the Kuwaitis had done their regular review. As far as I know, there is nothing irregular or troubling here.''

Even as the United States on Sunday continued a buildup of firepower in the region, including the deployment of a second American aircraft carrier, there were strong hints that this crisis might pass without another American attack on Iraq.

Some American allies in the region appear to hope that an American strike would not be needed.

After meeting Sunday with Perry, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz said that he did not expect a new American attack given the Iraqi pledge last week that there would be no further attacks on American warplanes in the no-fly zones.

Despite their deep-seated hostility toward Saddam, American allies in the Gulf have been placed in an awkward position by the threat of additional American military strikes against Iraq.

Militant Muslims in Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have portrayed the recent American moves as bullying, criticism that has served to enhance Saddam's standing in the region.