U.S. SAYS NO SIGNAL BEING SENT BY SHIP MOVEMENTS A U.S. Navy battle group led by the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk is in the northern Arabian Sea amid renewed concern about the safety of shipping off the coast of Iran, U.S. officials said today. But Pentagon spokesman Fred Hoffmann said that reports the naval strike force was in the region did not mean the United States was sending a new warning to Iran against escalating attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf. "Nothing like that has happened," he said. "No signal is being sent." He said that the Kitty Hawk is operating in an area where it usually does. "It's normal. It's in the waters where it's supposed to be. It's been there for over a month." The Kitty Hawk and its force of warplanes is the mainstay of the U.S. Indian Ocean Battle Group which patrols a vast area extending from the Indian subcontinent through the Arabian Sea. With the Kitty Hawk and its group in the Arabian Sea to the south and the U.S. Mideast Task Force in the Persian Gulf to the north, the United States has 10 warships on either end of the strategic Straits of Hormuz. The Pentagon, as is its custom, declined to confirm the exact whereabouts of the ships or what they were up to. State Department officials cited concern about the safety of ships passing through the Straits on the vital oil supply run to the Gulf. Iran has conducted repeated attacks on shipping in the Gulf and U.S. officials have said that Teheran has recently equipped itself with powerful Chinese and Italian-made anti-ship missiles, posing a greater threat.