Mission Impossible

Waldheim goes to Tehran and returns empty-handed

A doctor of law, a career diplomat in the Austrian foreign service, staid, elegant Kurt Waldheim had never confronted such a scene. Several hundred maimed Iranians, all veterans of the rioting that toppled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a year ago, shook their crutches and artificial limbs at the United Nations Secretary-General as they swarmed around him at a former military officers' club in Tehran. "Waldheim, look at us," shouted one of the wounded demonstrators. "Give the Shah back to us!" One man plucked out his glass eye and shouted: "That's what the Shah did to me!" Another lifted up his armless five-year-old son and told Waldheim that the Shah's secret police had mutilated the child in an attempt to wring a confession from his older brother, who was an anti-Shah dissident.

Waldheim, his legendary diplomatic poise badly shaken, hugged the child for a few moments while the crippled demonstrators and Waldheim's armed Iranian bodyguards wept. Then he promised emotionally that he would press for a U.N. investigation of atrocities committed under the Shah. Vowed Waldheim: "I shall bring this message of suffering before the United Nations, before the world community. We will inquire into the violation of human rights by the previous regime. We shall certainly do whatever we can to ensure that this mutilation of human beings will never take place again."

Waldheim's promise pleased his hosts. Said an aide to Iranian Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh: "This is a significant step in the right direction; this is a cornerstone worth building on." For weeks the Iranian government has sought an international hearing for its grievances against the Shah and the U.S. But by week's end there was no sign that Waldheim had produced the slightest movement toward achieving the main purpose of his trip to Tehran: to start negotiations on the release of the 50 American hostages at the U.S. embassy. The Secretary-General was under instruction to report back to the U.N. Security Council before its next meeting on Iran, scheduled for Monday, Jan. 7; if he signaled failure, the council had agreed to begin its debate on whether to impose an embargo on all exports to Iran except food and drugs.

Indeed, shortly after Waldheim left Tehran, the hostages' situation turned more ominous. The militants at the U.S. embassy demanded that Ghotbzadeh hand over to them U.S. Charge d'Affaires L. Bruce Laingen, who has been held by the government at the Foreign Ministry. In a letter to Ghotbzadeh, the students said that Laingen "must provide some explanations about documents of espionage discovered in the nest of spies." In addition, the students announced that if the hostages are tried, Vietnamese representatives will be invited to attend. They claimed that one of the hostages, Air Force Lieut. Colonel David Roeder, had flown 102 bombing missions over Viet Nam and therefore was a "war criminal."

No one had expected less from Waldheim's trip than the Secretary-General himself. "I don't have any illusions that I will come back with the hostages," he was reported to have told his aides, "but I hope to start a successful turn, get going in another direction, so that the U.S. and Iran will start negotiating." The 61-year-old diplomat, who once described his office as a mailbox for messages from antagonistic governments, was reluctant to go to Tehran in the first place. "How will the Iranians react?" he asked. "My going there depends on their attitude."

The Iranians quickly made their attitude clear. The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini announced that he would not meet with Waldheim. Said Khomeini: "I do not trust this man." The militants holding the U.S. embassy also said they would not talk with him. Only Foreign Minister Ghotbzadeh, who has neither the Ayatullah's ear nor the students' respect, was willing to meet with the Secretary-General, but not to bargain over the hostages. Said Ghotbzadeh: "He can come here and be informed of our views. The matter of negotiation is not an issue."

Despite the discouraging word from Iran, Waldheim left for Tehran just hours ahead of the Security Council's approval of a U.S.-sponsored resolution giving him seven days to break the impasse before the start of the debate on.sanctions. In proposing the sanctions resolution, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance reminded the council that Iran had ignored three U.N. demands to free the hostages. Said Vance: "The time has come for the world community to act firmly and collectively, to uphold international law and preserve international peace. If the international community fails to act when its law is flouted and its authority defied, we not only diminish the possibility for peace in this crisis; we belittle this institution of peace itself." After more than two weeks of delicate private talks by U.S. Ambassador Donald McHenry and three days of debate, the council had approved the resolution by 11 to 0.

Four council members abstained: Bangladesh, Czechoslovakia, Kuwait and the U.S.S.R. During the debate, Soviet Ambassador Oleg Troyanovsky complained that the U.S. resolution was too belligerent and therefore could not be supported by his government. He made no mention of the fact that as he spoke, his government's tanks were rolling through Afghanistan. The Soviet envoy's hypocrisy seemed to anger McHenry. Asked by a reporter after the debate whether the Soviets had abstained rather than vetoing the resolution because of a secret deal with the U.S., he snapped: "That is an obscene accusation. A country that is engaged in the rape of another country would be ill-advised to use its veto."

By leaving for Iran ahead of the vote, Waldheim was able to claim that he alone had made the decision to go. Insisted his spokesman, Franc,ois Giuliani: "The trip has nothing to do with the Security Council resolution." Waldheim hoped that this would head off any argument that he was acting under orders from the U.S., or that Tehran was allowing him into Iran under pressure from the threat of sanctions. It was the sort of face-saving gesture that has earned the Secretary-General a reputation as a master of diplomatic technicalities and procedures, but its effect was undercut by Vance. Asked if Waldheim's last-ditch diplomacy was the result of U.S. prodding, the Secretary of State forthrightly replied: "I think it is, and I'm delighted."

On landing in Tehran, Waldheim immediately was subjected to humiliating abuse. Local newspapers published a year-old photograph of him kissing the hand of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the Shah's twin sister. Read the caption in the evening daily Kayhan: "Kurt Waldheim in his previous trip to Tehran--he and Ashraf have raised their glasses in a toast to the archtraitor Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, marking his victory in the massacre and torture of the defenseless and innocent Iranian nation," A morning newspaper, the Islamic Republic, published another old photograph of Waldheim shaking hands with the Shah, whose face was blotted out by the editors with a Star of David. Read the caption: "Waldheim hand-in-hand with the executioner." The government TV station paired its pictures of Waldheim's arrival on a split screen with photos of an amputee and two dead children who the announcer said were victims of SAVAK, the Shah's secret police.

Waldheim's reception by Ghotbzadeh was not much warmer. They talked for nearly three hours on the morning after the Secretary-General's arrival, and were to meet twice more during the week. The session was devoted mostly to a long tirade by Ghotbzadeh against the U.S. and the U.N. He accused the U.N. of doing nothing about atrocities during the Shah's rule and of involving itself with Iran only after it was prodded by Washington over the hostages. According to a Foreign Ministry statement, Ghotbzadeh told Waldheim: "The superpowers and their satellites continue their sordid maneuvers to manipulate the U.N. machinery for their own ends."

Whatever slim hopes Waldheim had of winning the confidence of the Iranians ended dramatically that afternoon. As a gesture of sympathy, he had planned to tour a museum exhibition of atrocities that the government says were committed during the Shah's rule and to meet with 100 people who claim to have been crippled by the Shah's torturers. The visit was suddenly called off after about 1,000 unruly demonstrators massed in front of the building. Chanting "America, America, death to your dirty tricks," the crowd denounced the Secretary-General as a U.S. puppet. There also were shouts of "Marg Bar Waldheim!" (Death to Waldheim!). That evening Ghotbzadeh announced that the government had uncovered a plot against the Secretary-General's life by would-be assassins described only as outside agents with "foreign backing."

The next day the situation turned even uglier. In another attempt to mollify the Iranian public, Waldheim flew aboard an American-made Huey helicopter to the sprawling Behesht Zahra Cemetery in southern Tehran, where he intended to lay three large floral wreaths --hi Iran's national colors of green, white and red--in memory of the people killed during the struggle against the Shah.

As Waldheim's helicopter landed, about 500 militants and wounded revolutionary veterans, including some cripples hopping along and waving their crutches, charged toward him, chanting: "Neither compromise nor surrender. Deliver the Shah." The Secretary-General hurriedly climbed into a bulletproof Mercedes-Benz limousine when a middle-aged man broke through a cordon of armed Revolutionary Guards and screamed: "I am the father of four martyrs! You, Mr. Waldheim, Carter's representative, look around and see the blood spilled by the Shah." Whipped into a frenzy, a mob of men, many of them wearing symbolic white burial shrouds and waving crutches and artificial limbs, closed in on the car. Waldheim was visibly frightened. But his Iranian guards opened a way through the crowd for the limousine, which darted toward the tomb of the Ayatullah Mahmoud Taleghani, who is buried among the revolutionary dead. At the gravesite, another group of Iranians dashed toward Waldheim. "Go! Go!" he shouted at his driver, who raced back to the helicopter with the crowd in pursuit.

Waldheim later tried to minimize the incident. His aide Giuliani maintained that there was "nothing unusual about the families of victims being highly emotional about what was happening." But the Secretary-General conceded that the encounter had been a harrowing experience. Said he: "Looking around, I had an unpleasant feeling and was wondering who would be at my side if something happened." That afternoon Waldheim had his second and final encounter with maimed veterans, at the former military officers' club.

He also had his last session with Iranian government officials, this time with the mullahs and secular members of the ruling Revolutionary Council. Nearly two hours later, he emerged from the private talks looking weary. Waldheim called the meeting with the council "very helpful" and said that they had "a very extensive exchange of views with the different aspects of the problem." Added Giuliani: "He never did expect a major breakthrough here. He was here to start a process and knew that it would be a fairly lengthy process."

Clearly, in the Iranian government's view, that process has not even started. Said Ghotbzadeh of Waldheim's visit: "It was not a matter of making progress, but the fact that we exchanged views." Then, signaling that nothing had changed despite nine weeks of appeals from the U.N. and almost every country in the world, the Foreign Minister added: "The basic problem is the return of the Shah."

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