GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

General Norman Schwarzkopf privately has been harshly critical of the military performance of America's Arab allies. Using U.S. soldiers as the standard, he told Washington officials that only the Egyptian and Syrian armies displayed an adequate level of combat competence. But the general asserts that even the best Arab divisions were only about half as good as his own troops, who evidently rated a 10. The Soviet-trained Egyptian army, for example, was unable to adapt rapidly to fast-paced ground warfare. On one occasion Schwarzkopf had to request Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to order his troops into battle. Schwarzkopf also calls the Kuwaiti and Saudi ground forces the worst in the coalition, and he saves special criticism for inept Saudi army commanders, many of whom are members of the royal family. The allied chief preferred to deal almost exclusively with the Saudi air force.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart