Call To Arms

By Bruce W. Nelan

Sometimes a politician's rhetoric seems so transparent, so empty of genuine feeling, that a listener's attention wanders and the speaker ends up trivializing the cause he espouses. In his day George Bush has certainly driven his fair share of citizens to distraction. No one, not even the President's most loyal supporters, would confuse a Bush speech and its delivery with a performance by Churchill.

Last week, however, George Bush gave a speech -- no, make that an oration -- that riveted listeners and left absolutely no doubt he meant every word he uttered. Speaking softly and with a menacing lack of emotion, Bush stood before a joint session of Congress and spoke directly to Saddam Hussein. "Iraq will not be permitted to annex Kuwait," he vowed, to thunderous applause. "That's not a threat, not a boast. That's just the way it's going to be." Yes, he felt great sympathy for the hostages held by the Iraqi leader. "But our policy cannot change," he said, his finger stabbing at the air. "And it will not change."

It was Bush's toughest warning yet that if necessary the U.S. will use force to free Kuwait. Three days later at the White House, Bush delivered another admonition to Saddam. Iraqi troops in Kuwait had just raided the embassy compounds of France, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands, briefly detaining five Western consuls, including an American, and spiriting away three French citizens to an unknown location. After calling the incident an "outrageous Iraqi break-in," Bush resisted reporters' efforts to make him issue sweeping threats. "You're trying to get me to sound like I'm rattling sabers," he said. "When I rattle a saber, the man will know."

On Saturday an incensed French President Francois Mitterrand called upon the United Nations Security Council to extend the embargo against Saddam to all air traffic flying in and out of Iraq. In addition to announcing the expulsion of military attaches assigned to the Iraqi embassy in Paris, Mitterrand declared he would send an extra 4,000 troops to the gulf, upping the total number of French servicemen in the region to 7,800. He was not alone in answering Bush's call for additional support: Britain dispatched 6,000 more soldiers, Canada will send a squadron of 12 CF-18 jets, and Italy pledged eight Tornado fighters and a frigate.

Bush faces his adversary from a position of tremendous strength. Seven weeks after the Iraqi aggression began, his armed opposition to it is backed by six votes of the Security Council. A nationwide poll conducted for TIME/CNN last week by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman showed Bush with an overall approval rating of 71% and support for his handling of the gulf crisis even higher at 75%. His summit in Helsinki with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev bolstered his claim that the confrontation in the Persian Gulf is not the U.S. vs. Iraq but "Iraq against the world."

Saddam has tried to pose as a victim of Western imperialism and has called for jihad (holy war) against the 26-nation military force in the gulf. Last week Saddam's call was echoed by Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. He accused the U.S. of supporting Iraq in its eight-year war with Iran and making Saddam "arrogant enough to invade Kuwait." But, he said, it was the duty of the other states of the region to settle the conflict. "Anyone who fights America's aggression," Khamenei went on, "has engaged in a holy war in the cause of Allah, and anyone who is killed on that path is a martyr."

* But the image of American firmness on terrorism was somewhat shaken by Secretary of State James Baker's visit last week to Syria, a country the U.S. officially lists as a sponsor of terrorist organizations. Baker emphasized that the U.S. has "differences" with Syria and its steel-fisted dictator, Hafez Assad. But he wanted to encourage Damascus to send more troops to the international effort in the gulf. His four-hour meeting with Assad was also intended to underscore for Arab nationalists that not all radicals side with Iraq. Assad agreed to dispatch 300 tanks and an estimated 15,000 soldiers to join the 3,000 men he has already sent to the gulf.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz led a delegation to Tehran and negotiated the reopening of full diplomatic relations after a break of 10 years. A day later, the Tehran Times reported that Iran might begin delivering food and medicine to Baghdad. Reports soon leaked that Iraq had arranged to ship 200,000 bbl. of oil a day to Iran, freeing Iranian oil for sale on the high-price spot market.

Food shipments to Iraq have been an issue since the first Security Council resolution recognized they would be allowed in "humanitarian circumstances." Last week the Council accepted a distribution plan put forward by the U.S. and the other four permanent members: the Soviet Union, China, Britain and France. It voted 13-2, with Cuba and Yemen opposed, to allow such shipments on a case- by-case basis and only under the supervision of the U.N. or other international agencies.

Bush insisted he would not use Iraq's violation of diplomatic norms in Kuwait last week as a pretext to launch a military attack. That is not a real option yet; the U.S. commander in the gulf, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, says shipments are behind schedule, and it will be a month before all the heavy armor en route is actually delivered. While its power builds, Washington intends to pursue the diplomatic and economic tracks until they have either visibly begun to strangle Saddam or been proved a failure. Meanwhile, Washington is debating some unsettled questions:

-- How much should Japan and Germany contribute? America's two richest allies have been slow to ante up. Both claim their postwar constitutions make it impossible for them to send military units outside their own regions. Even if that is true, their prolonged fumbling in reaching for wallets has produced anger on Capitol Hill. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona accused Bonn / of "contemptible tokenism," while Democratic Representative Carroll Hubbard of Kentucky said Tokyo was behaving predictably: "If there's no profit in it for them, forget it."

The House actually passed a bill threatening to pull America's 50,000 troops out of Japan unless the full cost of their basing there was paid by Japan. It is not likely to become law, but Tokyo's response was swift. It announced last week that it was quadrupling its contribution to the gulf effort to $4 billion.

If he could, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl would probably send troops to the gulf. But citing the constitutional problems, his coalition partners, the Free Democrats, are against it, as are the opposition Social Democrats. Even Kohl's own party is split; most Germans believe overseas military involvement is a bad idea.

Kohl said last week it was "unacceptable" that Germany is on hand wherever export profits are to be made, "but we cannot be present when it comes to bearing responsibility." West Germany's lack of involvement in the gulf was all the more embarrassing because Iraq owes its chemical-weapons arsenal primarily to West German firms, which have illegally supplied Baghdad with the means to produce poison gas. After all-German elections in December, Kohl said, he would push for constitutional changes that would permit military participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Administration officials are more forgiving of Bonn's slowness to pay than Tokyo's, since Kohl's government faces a unification bill that will run to tens of billions of dollars in the coming year alone. After meeting with Baker on Saturday, Kohl announced Bonn would contribute $2.1 billion to defray the costs of the U.S.-led military operation and support the countries hardest hit by the embargo: Egypt, Jordan and Turkey.

-- Should the forces in the gulf be put under U.N. command? The initial quick reaction and buildup by the U.S. could not have been engineered by U.N. consensus. But now that 26 countries have lent their military support, calls are being heard for a transition to a more traditional U.N. peacekeeping force, partly because it suggests more unanimity and legitimacy than an American-led alliance. Gorbachev has said that if Soviet forces take part at all, it would have to be under a U.N. flag. If Germany changes its constitution as Kohl suggests, its troops would almost certainly participate, but only if the U.N. or another multilateral organization were in charge.

, In fact, a switch to U.N. command would not involve a lot of time and negotiation. The charter provides for the creation of an army made up of member states' troops and for a military staff to direct it. It has not been done during this crisis because the U.S. does not want anyone else making decisions on the use of its ground and air units in the gulf -- especially if Bush eventually decides to attack Iraq.

But if Washington concludes that it is vital to bring Soviet forces into the area, either to force an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait or to create a new security arrangement for the gulf, it will have to reconsider.

-- Should there be an international conference on the Middle East? Gorbachev's "secret" at the Helsinki summit was that Bush had invited Moscow to re- enter Middle East politics, something the U.S. had tried to prevent for decades to keep the Soviets from making mischief in an already volatile region. Now Moscow is welcome to join in negotiating the future of the entire Middle East, a development that could in time turn out to be the most momentous consequence of the present crisis. Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze talked at length about the shape of future security agreements in the region.

While both sides claimed there was no link between forcing Iraq out of Kuwait and settling the Israeli-Arab conflict, they did not entirely agree on the immediate prospects for resolving the dispute. "We have never, nor do we now, rule out the possibility of an international conference to resolve this issue at an appropriate time," said Baker. But Shevardnadze pushed it harder, saying the superpowers had agreed in Moscow last week to consult "at a certain stage" to "promote a global settlement of the Middle East problem."

If it appears that Saddam will be forced out of Kuwait, his withdrawal -- and his continuation in office -- will have to be coupled with arrangements to guarantee the security of the region. New military agreements, arms-control measures and international supervision will have to be put in place. But if it is to be war, that decision alone will sweep the others off the agenda.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Nigel Holmes

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Defense Personnel Support Center.}]CAPTION: WHILE THE TROOPS WAIT, THE PRICE TAG GROWS

With reporting by William Dowell/Cairo, Michael Duffy/Washington and J.F.O. McAllister with Baker