Navy U S Persian Gulf

The U.S. Navy has destroyed 41 mines in the Persian Gulf since it began sweeping a danger area off Iran's Farsi Island seven months ago, a spokesman said Saturday. Thirteen mines were found this year by the fleet of six wooden-hulled minesweepers operating in the northern reaches of the waterway, he said. The Navy said last November it had destroyed 14 mines off Farsi Island and that the situation was under control.

The United States will dispatch 13 warships to the Persian Gulf region next week, the Pentagon announced Thursday, as the Administration pondered whether to extend U.S. naval protection there to ships that do not fly the American flag. Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard described the deployment as a "long-planned rotation, a changing of the guard" designed to relieve some of the 29 ships on duty in the region.

The Reagan Administration, expanding the role of U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf, has decided to authorize them to aid some neutral ships under Iranian attack, congressional sources said Friday. The new rules of engagement, which were not publicly announced, go far beyond the role originally prescribed for U.S. forces in the gulf last May, when President Reagan ordered them to begin escorting 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers that had been re-registered under the American flag.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater suggested Thursday that more serious consideration is now being given to paying compensation to the relatives of victims of the Iran Air disaster, saying that the Reagan Administration will base any decision on "the moral responsibility of America."

Nearly 200 chanting Bangladeshi demonstrators burned President Reagan in effigy Tuesday to protest the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a U.S. warship. Police said the demonstrators were members of Bangladesh's Islamic Constitution Movement, a pro-Iran fundamentalist group.