Moscow Shuns Military Role in the Enforcement of U.N. Curbs on Iraq : Embargo: Though the Soviets voted for use of force to impose sanctions, Shevardnadze says other countries are willing and better able to stop ships.

MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, demonstrating Moscow’s continued reluctance to take on a military role in the Persian Gulf, said Sunday that the Soviet Union would leave it up to other countries to enforce the maritime blockade against Iraq.

The Soviet Union voted Saturday for the U.N. Security Council resolution allowing military enforcement of sanctions against Iraq, but Shevardnadze told reporters a day later that “we don’t have any plans and we don’t have any intentions to use force.”

Other countries, he said, are willing and better able to stop and inspect ships suspected of trying to break the U.N.-mandated trade embargo imposed against Iraq for its Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

“The forces are there,” Shevardnadze said. “The required resolution has been passed, and they can act.”

Speaking at a joint news conference after two days of meetings with French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, Shevardnadze called once again for a diplomatic resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis.

“Any other variation would be a catastrophe,” he said.

In energetic initiatives on the diplomatic front, the Soviet Union has begun to serve in many ways as an intermediary between Iraq and other countries and maintains constant contact with the Iraqi leadership, Shevardnadze said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid headed for Moscow on Sunday to become the latest in a small stream of Middle Eastern emissaries to the Soviet capital. He reportedly carried a message for President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and planned intensive talks on the gulf with Shevardnadze.

Mikhail Sytenko, a Soviet envoy to the Middle East assigned to the Persian Gulf crisis, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday, Shevardnadze said. He hinted that higher-placed officials may fly to the Iraqi capital in the coming days.

Shevardnadze and Dumas issued a joint statement recommending further collective U.N. action to end the gulf crisis and advising Iraq to “show realism and common sense.”

Shevardnadze denied reports that almost 200 Soviet military advisers still in Iraq are working on military operations there, but he acknowledged that their presence is “a problem” to be solved--in time.

About 8,000 Soviet citizens remain in Iraq. Shevardnadze indicated that an evacuation of Soviet women and children scheduled to begin Sunday would go ahead despite Iraq’s anger at Soviet support for the latest U.N. resolution.

Moscow officials also denied reports that a Soviet military attache in Washington had handed to the United States detailed plans of a missile system that the Soviet Union had sold to Iraq in its longtime role as that country’s main arms supplier.

The Sunday edition of the government newspaper Izvestia, quoting Defense Ministry officials, acknowledged that the Soviet attache, Gen. G. Yakovlev, had visited the Pentagon on Aug. 19 but said that there was nothing secret about the data he supplied--lists of the kinds of weapons that the Soviet Union has sold to Iraq.

“In accordance with treaty commitments to Iraq and established practice in this sphere of international relations, there was no talk of the quantity, tactical and technical characteristics,” Izvestia said.

Despite Moscow’s refusal to participate in enforcing the U.N. sanctions against Iraq, Shevardnadze said that the Soviet Union would not object if the United States or other countries resorted to force “in the framework of the resolution” passed Saturday.

The resolution, approved by the Security Council in a 13-0 vote with two abstentions, calls for “such measures commensurate with the specific circumstances as may be necessary” to end commerce with Iraq.

Two Soviet warships are anchored just south of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow deep-water passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, but officials have insisted they are there to protect Soviet commercial shipping and not for military use.

Asked whether Moscow’s decision not to join the blockade meant it would also balk at contributing troops to a multinational force if one is formed under the aegis of the United Nations, Shevardnadze repeated the highly noncommittal Soviet line: If the United Nations approves such a force, and if the Soviet Union votes in favor of it, then Moscow will fulfill its obligations.