In a game of brinkmanship, it helps to know precisely where the brink is. Last week some people thought Saddam Hussein was playing the game. His Foreign minister showed no sign of flexibility at the last-chance meeting in Geneva-“a total stiff-arm,” complained George Bush. But there was hopeful speculation that Saddam might offer some sort of compromise just before the deadline this Tuesday, or even a face-saving day or two after it. If so, Saddam could stumble over the edge of an abyss before his ploy takes effect. Again and again last week, Secretary of State James Baker warned that time was running out. “We pass the brink at midnight, Jan. 15,” he told U.S. airmen in Taif, Saudi Arabia. If Saddam does not at least start to withdraw from Kuwait by then, war could break out very quickly.
After Congress voted last Saturday to authorize the use of force, Bush insisted that he had not yet decided to go to war. By late last week, NEWSWEEK learned, no single date for the start of hostilities - K-Day, as some of the troops were calling it-had been selected. Instead, there was a series of dates, beginning not long after Tuesday’s deadline and extending into the middle of February. “It’s all scenario driven, and the president hasn’t settled on one date yet,” said a well-informed source in Washington. The Pentagon, still not fully prepared for a ground war, favored one of the later dates. But Bush himself told reporters that he would be inclined to act “sooner rather than later.”
The sudden war scare prompted foreign diplomats to evacuate Baghdad, while Westerners fled other potential battlegrounds, notably Israel. There was a flurry of last-minute interventions by would-be peacemakers: France, Germany, Algeria, Jordan, the Soviet Union - even Zambia and the Nordic countries. None of them made much headway, and most were happy to step aside for the intermediary of last resort, United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Promising nothing, but invoking “my moral authority,” Perez de Cuellar flew off to Baghdad to talk to Saddam over the weekend. American officials fretted that at the last minute, some partial concession by Saddam might split the alliance arrayed against him and undercut the deadline. “If Saddam is moving on the 15th, of course the president can’t go to war,” said one U.S. official. But the possibility of being preempted by last gasp diplomacy or by Iraqi stalling also could persuade Bush to launch his attack soon after the deadline passes.
War could be just what Saddam wants. According to one school of thought, the Iraqi dictator may calculate that he stands to gain more from a brave defeat in Kuwait than from backing down before the deadline (page 22). Despite the obvious risks to his regime and his own person, he may believe that a losing but short-lived war against the hated Americans will make him the hero, and hence the leader, of the Arab world. Last week Saddam’s government insisted that it would present no new peace initiative after the deadline. Saddam said he was ready for “a showdown between the infidels and the true believers,” boasting that the high-tech Americans and their allies would be defeated by battle-tested Iraqi “soldiers carrying rifles and hand grenades.” And his Foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, said after meeting with Baker that if war broke out in the Persian Gulf, Iraq “absolutely” intended to expand the conflict by striking Israel. Israeli leaders huddled last week to consider their response if attacked (page 30).
Aziz and Baker both went to Geneva determined not to give an inch. They both succeeded. After an awkward handshake requested by photographers, the meeting went on for six and a half hours, encouraging many anxious onlookers in the global village to hope that progress was being made. But the two men were talking past each other. Baker directed his remarks to Saddam, warning that if the Iraqi dictator stayed in Kuwait, he faced military disaster and that there could be no face-saving compromise or change in the deadline. Aziz seemed to be addressing an Arab audience, including his hard-line masters back in Baghdad. Baker’s inner circle had hoped for a surprise offer from Aziz-perhaps an unacceptable one, but at least something that would indicate flexibility. Instead, they heard only a familiar litany of Iraqi grievances. The meeting lasted until both sides were talked out.
“I’m not trying to threaten,” Baker said more than once. “I simply want you to understand the consequences.” He portrayed them starkly: Iraq had to get out by the 15th or face a conflict it cannot control. “Don’t think this is going to be a war you can … fight on your terms,” he was quoted as saying. Another participant in the talks said Baker was “very cool throughout. He understands that you have more impact if you’re not histrionic.” Baker showed irritation only once. When Aziz claimed that the Iraqis had to invade Kuwait because the Kuwaitis were threatening them, Baker retorted: “That’s ridiculous.” As he had in the past, the secretary satisfied one of Saddam’s key demands by making it clear that Iraq would not be attacked if it withdrew from Kuwait. But once again he rejected a facesaving Iraqi condition: that resolution of the gulf crisis be linked specifically to an international conference on the Palestinian problem.
The depth of the impasse became apparent when Aziz refused to accept a letter from Bush to Saddam, reading a copy of the message and claiming afterward that, to his eyes, it was not written in sufficiently “polite language.” For the rest of the meeting, a brown envelope containing the original of Bush’s letter lay on the table between Aziz and Baker, beneath the photocopy that had been read by the lraqi Foreign minister. When the two sides broke for lunch, Baker posted a guard over the letter. At the end of the day, the secretary asked Aziz if he was sure that he did riot want to carry the message to Saddam. “I’m sure,” Aziz replied, and Baker finally retrieved the envelope.
At a press conference later, Bush insisted: “The letter was not rude. The letter was direct. And the letter did exactly what I think is necessary at this stage.” When the letter began to leak to the press, the White House released the full text, which seemed far from rude. “We stall d today at the brink of war between Iraq and the world,” it began, respectfully. Balancing carrot and stick, it assured Saddam that by complying fully with U.N. resolutions, “Iraq will gain the opportunity to rejoin the international community. More immediately, the Iraqi military establishment will escape destruction.” The strongest language, such as it was, came in a warning that Iraq should not resort to chemical or biological warfare, terrorism or destruction of Kuwait’s oil facilities. “You and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of this sort,” Bush wrote.
In his own remarks to Baker, Aziz never mentioned an attack on Israel, sources said afterward. The threat came later, during a press conference, and appeared to be designed primarily for Arab consumption. During a long session with reporters, Aziz never mentioned the word “Kuwait,” blandly referring to Iraq’s invasion of the emirate as “what happened on the second of August.” He insisted that the crisis in the gulf could be resolved by an “Arab solution,” the terms of which he did not specify.
Aziz is a competent diplomatic technician, and his session with Baker was workmanlike. But as a Christian who does not belong to Saddam’s inner circle, he has no authority to act independently. Real clout seemed to reside with a man who sat alongside him, taking notes and saying nothing. That enigmatic figure was Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half brother, a former head of Iraqi intelligence who now serves as ambassador to the U.N. agencies in Geneva. Tikriti has a fearsome reputation. “He has literally killed hundreds of people with his own hands,” charged a senior Arab official who has extensive contacts in the Iraqi government. “From Geneva, he runs the whole terrorist operation of Iraq.” Although Tikriti apparently had some sort of falling-out with Saddam in the early ’80s, he now seems to be trusted enough to serve as Aziz’s watchdog. “He wouldn’t leave Aziz for a minute,” said the Arab official. “I think [Aziz] was not allowed to say anything. I think he was not trusted to see Baker alone. If he had, perhaps he could have hinted to Baker what paths to take.”
After the meeting, Iraq continued to insist on firm linkage between the gulf crisis and the Arab-Israeli dispute. “If the Americans want this problem resolved, they must put Palestine first,” Saddam told a gathering of Islamic scholars in Baghdad. Although it supports an international conference on the Palestinian problem under “appropriate” conditions, the Bush administration continues to resist direct linkage, a position strongly supported by the American public (chart). Washington is likely to change its tune only if a key ally, such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt, abandons the allied position that Saddam must withdraw from Kuwait without conditions. So far, the Arab allies are standing firm. Most of them even acknowledge Israel’s right to strike back if it is attacked by Iraq, as long as the retaliation is in proportion to the attack. “The fact is,” says a senior Arab diplomat, “most of us are simply too committed on the ground to turn around against the United States, even if we were inclined to. I think we’d see an Iraqi airstrike, and even an Israeli response, for what it was - a sideshow to the main event.”
After Geneva, the main event suddenly seemed imminent, and other negotiators jumped into the search for a settlement. The European Community, led by the French, attempted to come up with its own peace plan. Jordan’s King Hussein was in perpetual motion, trying to put together some offer, any offer, to avert a conflict. Algeria proposed itself mediary. “It’s my profound conviction that Saddam Hussein does not want war. He wants to negotiate,” said Algerian Foreign Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali, who visited Baghdad with his president last month. On Friday, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev called Bush to offer a new peace plan. Bush credited Gorbachev with “thinking innovatively,” but administration officials said the Soviet proposal consisted mostly of old components in a new package.
After two days of crisscross diplomacy, most of the mediators stood down in favor of Perez de Cuellar. The U.N. secretary-general had no leeway to negotiate with Saddam. “I’m going to listen to what he has to say to me, and of course I’m going to say something, but without going beyond the resolutions of the Security Council,” he told reporters in Paris. Perez de Cuellar could assure Saddam that Iraq will not be attacked if it withdraws from Kuwait. Bush and his allies have said so many times. He could say that Western troops will leave Saudi Arabia and that a U.N. peacekeeping force will replace them. Bush said again last Saturday that he does not want U.S. ground troops to be stationed in the region. Perez de Cuellar could pass along a promise from the Europeans that they will try to arrange an international conference on the Mideast this year. But he could not give Saddam the formal linkage that the Iraqi leader seems to need to cover a retreat from Kuwait, if only because he has no authority to guarantee that the United States or Israel will attend a peace conference.
Talking to reporters last Saturday, Bush seemed to signal that he would support a peace conference, as long as it is not tied to Iraqi withdrawal. “I simply want to see us avoid what is known as linkage,” he explained. The crucial endgame question may turn out to be whether Saddam will accept a wink and a nod on the issue, or risk war by holding out for a formal assurance. Amatzia Baram of Haifa University, an Israeli expert on Iraq, thinks Saddam has become more unpredictable since the end of his eight-year war with Iran. “The old Saddam would have withdrawn from Kuwait, even unconditionally, to spare Iraq and himself,” says Baram. “The new Saddam is even more of a gambler than before, and he seems to be more desperate, which makes it more difficult to gauge which way he will go.”
Bush acknowledged last week that it was already too late, logistically, for Saddam to pull more than half a million men out of Kuwait by Tuesday night. But he insisted that the Iraqi dictator has to start “a massive, rapid withdrawal” by then if he wants to avoid war. One of the president’s top advisers worries that Saddam “seems to believe we lack the nerve to use military force… He also believes if it comes to force, he can somehow ride it out.” Now that Bush has demonstrated domestic and international support for his uncompromising stand, Saddam may think again. This week gives him just enough time to make the hard choices that can head off a war or lead him to his doom.
