Diplomacy

By YEVGENI PRIMAKOV

As George Bush prepared to launch a ground war, Mikhail Gorbachev made one last attempt to broker peace between Iraq and the allies. Once again he dispatched his personal adviser, Yevgeni Primakov, to Baghdad, and then agreed to see Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in Moscow. The Kremlin desperately tried to persuade Saddam that he must comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions or face the terrible consequences of a ground battle. Here is Primakov's account of those last, tense days.

I had been to Baghdad twice since October to see Saddam, but this time it was much more difficult to get to the Iraqi capital because of the air war. I flew to Tehran on Feb. 11, then drove to the Iraqi border, where I was met by Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Saad al-Feisal and Soviet Ambassador Viktor Posuvalyuk. We drove at high speed toward Baghdad. From time to time the cars, which traveled in a tight convoy, switched on their headlights in order to make out the road in the pitch dark.

As soon as we entered the suburbs of Baghdad after more than two hours of driving, the convoy split up. The cars we drove, like all other vehicles of top Iraqi officials, had been spattered with dirt as camouflage. I could not help thinking that perhaps this made these cars more conspicuous, giving away those who were in them.

My meeting with Saddam occurred the following evening, Feb. 12. We thought we would be taken to a bunker, perhaps far out of Baghdad. But everything was much more prosaic. We were escorted to a guest house in the center of the city. A power generator suddenly clicked on, and the house was filled with light. Then Saddam Hussein appeared with the entire Iraqi leadership.

After hearing rebukes that Soviet policy had given the "green light" to the "U.N. war against Iraq" and declarations about Iraq's "unshakable" stand, I asked to be left alone with Saddam. Then I said to him, "The Americans are determined to launch a large-scale ground operation to crush Iraqi forces in Kuwait." Politics, I reminded him, was the art of the possible. On Gorbachev's instructions, I made a proposal: to announce the pullout of troops from Kuwait. The deadline should be the shortest possible, and the withdrawal should be total and without conditions.

We had reached a turning point. Saddam began to ask specific questions -- evidence that he was not flatly rejecting the proposals. Would there be guarantees that Iraqi soldiers leaving Kuwait would not be "shot in the back"? Would attacks on Iraq be halted after the pullout? Would the U.N. sanctions against Iraq then be lifted?

Because I was leaving for Moscow shortly and telephone communications had been knocked out by the bombing raids, Saddam said a "brief reply" to the * overall proposal would be brought to the Soviet embassy by Aziz, who would also go to Moscow to continue the contacts. At 2 a.m. on Feb. 13, Aziz brought a written statement declaring that "the Iraqi leadership is seriously studying the ideas outlined by the representative of the Soviet President and will give its reply in the immediate future." Two days later, the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council announced that it was willing to comply with U.N. Security Council Resolution 660. But it also included a whole series of conditions.

Meeting with Gorbachev, Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh and me in Moscow on the morning of Feb. 18, Aziz said that in spite of the brutal strike inflicted upon Iraq, it would not surrender -- and that was final. "Your stand seems very inconsistent," said Gorbachev. "On the one hand, this is an important step toward a political settlement, since you acknowledge Resolution 660, calling for an unconditional withdrawal. On the other hand, your positions seem to include preconditions for that withdrawal." Gorbachev also wanted to know why the withdrawal statement "did not use the word Kuwait."

The President offered the Iraqi leadership the following plan: Iraq would announce a total withdrawal from Kuwait (not just in general terms). It would also set a specific deadline for the end of the pullout that should be as short as possible. The withdrawal would begin immediately after the cessation of armed actions and would have "no strings attached." With one exception: a guarantee that troops departing from Kuwait would not be attacked -- "shot in the back." Said Gorbachev: "The timing is crucial. If you cherish the lives of your countrymen and the fate of Iraq, then you must act without delay."

Aziz left for Baghdad later that same day, and the tension-filled hours ticked into days as we waited for news from Iraq. On the evening of Feb. 20, we received a message from our embassy in Baghdad: Aziz had requested that a Soviet plane be sent to Iran to take him on to Moscow. The next day, in a clear indication that the talks would not be easy, Saddam Hussein gave an inconsistent and emotional speech over the radio in which he repeated the whole set of accusations and threats. Still, Aziz returned to Moscow around midnight and was brought directly from the airport to the Kremlin for talks. Gorbachev never got to leave the office that night. They blocked out a few general areas of agreement. The main one was that Iraq accepted Resolution 660 and was prepared to remove all its armed forces from Kuwait. However, the Iraqis claimed that they would be unable to complete the withdrawal by the proposed deadline.

We pointed out that Iraq had been able to bring its forces into Kuwait in a matter of hours. But Aziz replied that it had only been two divisions and that approximately 500,000 men had been concentrated in Kuwait during the seven months that followed. Gorbachev took a firm stand: "The proposed deadline can and must be reduced to a minimum."

Since time was passing quickly, presidential press spokesman Vitali Ignatenko held a briefing at 3:30 a.m. to announce the points of agreement that had been reached with the Iraqis. He said work would continue, and we expected further progress to be made. Hope was mounting.

Meanwhile, Gorbachev had a 90-minute telephone conversation with Bush, for which I was present. Bush expressed his appreciation for Gorbachev's efforts. But at the same time, he doubted that the change in Baghdad's position would lead to anything. Moreover, Bush stressed that he was concerned about the fate of the POWs. Nor did he think it was possible to ignore the colossal damage inflicted on Kuwait by the Iraqi aggression. The U.S. President was also dissatisfied with the period set for the troop withdrawal. As soon as he hung up, Gorbachev said to Bessmertnykh and me, "Make sure you pay particular attention to these concerns of President Bush's during the talks you will hold over the next hours."

There was practically no time for sleep. At the Foreign Ministry mansion on Alexei Tolstoy Street, Bessmertnykh, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Belonogov and I met with Aziz and his party. An exceedingly difficult bargaining session began. In fact, it took about an hour to deal just with the issue of the deadline for releasing American and other national POWs. The Iraqis kept referring to difficulties of a technical nature. In the end, we insisted: three days after the cease-fire began, and not a single day more.

The debate over the time frame for the troop pullout was also very difficult. The Iraqis insisted on six weeks, stressing technical reasons again. Since we knew that the season of winds and sandstorms would soon set in, making it difficult to carry out military actions, and that the Americans, under these conditions, would consider that Iraq was intentionally "dragging its feet," we proposed setting a separate deadline for the Iraqi troop withdrawal from Kuwait City -- during the first four days and no longer. We also managed to squeeze the deadline for a complete pullout to three weeks. Aziz simply would not go any further.

We failed to reach any agreement over the issue of lifting the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the resolutions adopted by the Security Council, following Resolution 660. These resolutions included the payment of compensation for the damage done to Kuwait. Aziz said he had a "rigid mandate" about how to handle this question, beyond which he could not go. In our view, the lifting of sanctions was a matter for the Security Council to decide. We could talk about the Soviet position only.

Taking President Bush's concerns into account, we had made some progress, even in those areas where the Iraqis seemed absolutely unshakable earlier that morning. For example, they removed the condition that U.N. economic sanctions should be lifted when Iraq had withdrawn two-thirds of its armed forces from Kuwait. Now they proposed that economic sanctions be lifted when the last Iraqi soldiers had left that country. It seemed to me that this shift cleared up any suspicions that Iraq wanted only the partial withdrawal of its troops.

Aziz said that any decisions would have to be taken by the entire leadership, and first of all, Saddam. He proposed that I fly with him to Baghdad immediately for a meeting. Realizing that time was running out, we rejected this plan and urged him to get in touch with the Iraqi leadership directly from Moscow.

But by this time Bush had given Iraq an ultimatum, demanding the withdrawal of the Iraqi forces from Kuwait within a week and from Kuwait City within 48 hours. Moreover, this withdrawal was to begin at noon New York time on Saturday, Feb. 23.

We received a positive reply from Saddam at 2 a.m. Moscow time, on Saturday, Feb. 23 (6 p.m. Friday in New York and Washington). Ten hours later, Aziz announced in Moscow that the Iraqi leadership had agreed to the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all its armed forces from Kuwait. But at the same time, he referred to the entire "complex" of issues, including the need to pronounce invalid all the resolutions that had been adopted by the Security Council after Resolution 660. Then he left the Soviet Union for Baghdad.

Gorbachev immediately dispatched telegrams to the leaders of all the countries on the Security Council. He telephoned Bush again and called the leaders of the multinational coalition and Iran. Gorbachev said the Iraqi decision to withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait had created a new situation. He suggested convening the Security Council to integrate into one package the U.S. demands and the plan adopted by Iraq.

In Gorbachev's view the differences between the formula to which Iraq had agreed and the proposals from a number of other countries were not so great that they could not be worked out in the Security Council in one or two days. Certainly these differences were not so substantial that they justified a further escalation of the war. The Soviet U.N. representative was instructed to request an emergency session of the Security Council. However, as dawn broke on Feb. 24, the ground offensive of the multinational coalition began.