NEW YORK, Aug 19: The United States is sending weapons and other supplies to its bases in Middle East which could be a critical part of the war stocks if President Bush decides to attack Iraq, said the New York Times.

Quoting Defense Department and government officials the Times said that Pentagon has hired two giant cargo ships to carry armoured vehicles and helicopters, among other war material, and eight additional cargo ships capable of carrying ammunition, tanks and ambulances.

The Air Force is stockpiling weapons, ammunition and spare parts, including aeroplane engines, at depots in the Persian Gulf region and in the United States. Arsenals of Air Force and Navy precision-guided weapons, which proved devastating in Afghanistan, should be fully replenished by autumn, military officials told the paper.

However, the paper said that senior Pentagon officials say the logistical movements do not represent a stealth deployment and should not be interpreted as evidence that a campaign against Iraq is imminent, or even a certainty. Indeed, some of the movements now under way were ordered months or even years ago. But taken together, the steps suggest that those responsible for arming America’s fighting forces in time of war are beginning serious planning.

“We don’t know when the next contingency might be, but we want to get this in the hands of the war fighters,” Gen. Lester L. Lyles, chief of the Air Force Material Command, told NYT in an interview.

The paper said that the Defense Department and military officials who described the logistical plans indicated that a public discussion of the growing American arsenal confronting Mr. Hussein fit an emerging information strategy to unnerve Iraq ahead of possible combat and weaken it in case of war, as well as reassure skittish allies in the region.

The Pentagon is contracting for one ship to move troop-carrying combat vehicles from Europe and the United States to the Persian Gulf to join equipment for four armoured brigades already stored there. Another will carry vehicles, helicopters and ammunition to a Red Sea port for a military exercise this year.

The Defense Department also has awarded a contract to Maersk Line to operate eight cargo ships capable of carrying ammunition and tanks. The ships will be positioned near the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, home of a British base used by the United States as a staging point the paper said.

The Times says that senior officials acknowledge that the shipments could support war options that Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of the military’s Central Command, has recently presented to Mr. Bush.

Logistics planners are closely tracking the various war options, officials said. The mundane task of setting aside food, fuel and weaponry for troops is essential for sustaining any major military operation. It takes time, and to avoid tipping adversaries off about a military operation, Pentagon officials say, it is prudent to start the flow of supplies now, even without specific orders.

The paper asserts that indications of American resolve and advance placement of weapons are intended to reassure skittish gulf allies and Iraqi opposition groups, officials said, and to convince Iraqi officers and their troops that the Americans would win, especially the Iraqis responsible for weapons of mass destruction and the missiles or artillery to deliver them. American planners hope that Iraqi officers will not pull the trigger after calculating the punishment awaiting them if they unleash weapons on behalf of a crumbling government.

Military transportation planners say the magnitude of the air and sea lift of United States troops and equipment to the Middle East would be daunting: 7,000 miles by air and 12,000 by sea from the East Coast, and more from the West Coast.

The military would need substantially more equipment, though, to support the concepts for operations against Iraq that have been presented to Mr. Bush.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld inspected some of those locations himself this summer when he conferred with regional leaders and visited American forces in those states. In Qatar, where just over 3,300 American military personnel are based, Mr Rumsfeld toured the sprawling air base at Al Udeid, a significant hub in the American-led campaign against terror the paper said.

Al Udeid has a fleet of air force KC-10 and KC-135 refuelling tankers that kept attack jets and bombers, based elsewhere in the region, in the air as they carried out the campaign over Afghanistan. It also has air force construction engineers and a smattering of army personnel. The base has runways long enough to handle any aircraft.

New hangars have been built into the chalk-coloured desert, each disguised as a sand dune to blend in with the Qatari badlands and foil the radar of any adversary’s missile the paper reported.

Mr Rumsfeld also visited Bahrain, home to the Fifth Fleet and about 4,200 American military personnel, and greeted troops at Camp Doha, an Army base in Kuwait about 35 miles from the Iraqi border.

On Sunday the Times reported that a covert American programme during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war.