The Gulf It's All in the Wording

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The U.S. has managed to hold together the worldwide coalition against Iraq. Strains and threats abound, and Saddam Hussein has made adroit attempts to exploit them. But fundamentally, the coalition is still united.

More or less. For now.

George Bush uses much more upbeat language, of course. So do Mikhail Gorbachev, Francois Mitterrand and other leaders of the coalition. And it is true that no one has edged away from the central demand: Iraq must get out of Kuwait. But whether, and to what extent, the other members will continue to back American ideas on how to achieve that goal -- especially as Washington comes closer and closer to converting what has always been an implicit threat of war to a very explicit one -- remains uncertain.

The U.S. has concluded that the next step in the campaign against Saddam must be a United Nations Security Council resolution approving the use of military force if necessary to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. And it plans to push through such a resolution this week, while American delegate Thomas Pickering is president of the Security Council and in control of its agenda (under the council's system of monthly rotation, Pickering will step down after Friday, Nov. 30). Rounding up support for that resolution was the focus of intense American diplomatic efforts last week, including talks by President Bush with other government leaders at the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) gathering in Paris and travels by Secretary of State James Baker from Yemen, which holds the Security Council presidency in December, to Colombia.

Though approval of a resolution appeared likely, it was uncertain whether the language would be as timely or as forceful as Bush and Baker would like. Bush would go no further than to say that "there is a chance" the resolution will be adopted this week. If so, it would give a boost to his policy on the home front as well. The Senate Armed Services Committee opens hearings on gulf policy this week, to be followed shortly by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, next week, by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Congress has been demanding a voice in any decision to fight Iraq; 45 House Democrats went so far as to file a lawsuit asking the federal courts to enjoin Bush from committing U.S. forces to combat without prior authorization from Congress. A U.N. use-of-force resolution could encourage Congress to grant such authorization. "It would have some significant impact if the United Nations granted such a resolution," said House Speaker Thomas Foley, one of several leaders who accompanied Bush on his Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, another of that group, said if the U.N. resolution passed, he would urge Bush to call the full Congress into special session to vote a domestic version. There is a serious question, however, about just what the U.N. resolution would say. Spanish Foreign Minister Francisco Fernandez Ordonez, speaking to reporters at the CSCE, disclosed that the U.S. was seeking a two-part resolution: the first part would set a deadline for Iraq to comply with previous U.N. demands that it get out of Kuwait; the second would authorize member nations to use "any means necessary" to compel compliance if the deadline is not met. When Bush broached the idea of such a resolution to him, French President Mitterrand declared, "I said yes." But Mitterrand added that there would and should be no "automatisme" about the resolution. The apparent meaning: rather than starting to bomb without further ado once the deadline passed, the U.S. would be obliged to consult, presumably with the U.N.'s military staff committee, about what kind of military action to take and when.

The Soviet attitude is even more unsure. U.S. and Soviet officials canceled a Bush-Gorbachev press conference that they had scheduled in Paris, obviously because the two Presidents, dining together, had failed to agree on a use-of- force resolution. Both sides then scrambled to deny any impression of a ( serious split. Bush declared that he and Gorbachev "see eye to eye," and any differences are "extraordinarily minor." Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze both said the Security Council needed to take further action against Iraq, but neither would use what journalists have begun to call "the F word." At a hastily scheduled press conference back in Moscow, Gorbachev dismissed talk of a rift with Bush and suggested, with a smile, that U.S. reporters were "trying to find some crack" in the coalition. Nonetheless, the Soviet President continued to dodge questions about whether he would support a use-of-force resolution.

Gorbachev is under conflicting pressures. He needs Western economic help, and thus has a strong incentive to cooperate with the U.S., but he also must retain the support of the Soviet army, which hates to see Moscow take a back seat to Washington in international affairs. On top of that, Moscow sources suggest Gorbachev is getting conflicting advice from Shevardnadze, who takes a pro-U.S. line toward Iraq, and Yevgeni Primakov, a Middle East expert who has served as Gorbachev's personal representative on missions to Baghdad and still insists that a negotiated solution is possible. So the Soviet President is vacillating; he has virtually committed the U.S.S.R. to back some sort of Security Council resolution, but how strongly worded is most uncertain. American diplomats say they would gladly sacrifice some forceful language to maintain international unity. How far can they water down a resolution, however, before it begins to sound to Saddam not like an affirmation of unity but like a sign of a split, barely papered over?

Primakov is not the only one advocating negotiations with Saddam; German Chancellor Helmut Kohl used the word repeatedly after a meeting with Bush last week. The President said they were in sync, since both want a peaceful solution, but that seems doubtful. In Washington's view, so long as the coalition sticks to its core demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait totally and unconditionally, there is nothing to negotiate: Saddam either complies or he doesn't and must be forced out.

Talk of negotiations, however, taps into a deep vein of opinion, in the U.S. as well as abroad, that Bush is rushing pell-mell toward war. Officials in the British Foreign Office are concerned that other allies might be veering toward a settlement that lets Iraq keep part of Kuwait, if that seems the only alternative to fighting.

Saddam has done his best to play on such sentiment. Last week he announced that Iraq was sending an additional 250,000 troops to Kuwait. Some may be reservists who would not fight well, and Iraq might have trouble maintaining so large a force in the face of American air raids on supply lines. In poker terms, though, Saddam was seeing and raising Bush, who had earlier announced plans to send American reinforcements, estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 troops, to the area. Saddam's counter is likely to intensify world fears of war.

Simultaneously, the Iraqi dictator pledged to free all hostages, in installments, between Christmas and March 25 -- just about the time period that Washington sees as the window for effective military action -- on condition that Iraq is not attacked. Saddam further promised to free immediately all German hostages (roughly 180) as a reward for Kohl's talk of negotiations and as an encouragement to the U.S. and Britain to be similarly reasonable. That the U.S. has held its coalition together so far in the face of such threats and blandishments is a remarkable achievement. But it is an achievement that will get harder to maintain the closer the world moves toward war.

With reporting by Jay Carney/Moscow and Christopher Ogden with Baker