U.S. OFFERS TO ESCORT KUWAITI TANKERS IN GULF The U.S. Has offered warships to escort Kuwaiti tankers in the Gulf past Iranian anti-ship missile batteries, Defence Department officials said. The officials told Reuters yesterday the offer was made last week by Navy Admiral William Crowe, chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Middle East visit. Reagan administration officials said later that Washington did not seek military confrontation with Tehran, but would not let Iran use Chinese-made "Silkworm" anti-ship missiles, capable of covering the narrow entrance to the Gulf, to choke oil shipments to the West. Defence officials said Kuwait had asked if protection for up to a dozen vessels, most of them tankers, could be provided by three U.S. Navy destroyers and two frigates now in the southern Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In addition to a half dozen ships in the U.S. Navy's small Mideast Task Force near the Straits of Hormuz, the Pentagon has moved 18 warships, including the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, into the northern Arabian Sea in the past month. White House and defence officials said that massing the fleet was routine and had nothing to do with the Iran-Iraq war or Iran's stationing of missiles near the mouth of the Gulf. The State Department said on Friday that Iran has been told about U.S. Concern over the threat to oil shipments in the Gulf. The communication was sent through Switzerland, which represents U.S. Interests in Iran. Iran denied as baseless reports that it intended to threaten shipping in the Gulf and said any U.S. Interference in the region would meet a strong response, Tehran Radio said on Sunday. Several hundred vessels have been confirmed hit in the Gulf by Iran and Iraq since early 1984 in the so-called tanker war, an offshoot of their 6-1/2-year-old ground conflict.