Iraq, America Signal Desire To Avoid Another War U.S. Asks France, Russia To Pressure Saddam

In signs that both Iraq and the United States would like to step back from another conflict in the Persian Gulf, Iraq sent signals on Sunday that it did not want a military confrontation, and the United States persuaded Russia to press Saddam Hussein to back down in the dispute over weapons inspections.

In Baghdad, the official Iraqi News Agency reported that at a Cabinet meeting Saddam “stressed that Iraq was not seeking a confrontation with the American administration.”

And Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, in an interview with Le Figaro in Paris, said Iraq would readmit American arms inspectors if the United Nations agreed to change the makeup of the inspection teams, with equal representation given to each permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. That offer was rejected by American and U.N. officials, who said that Iraq should not dictate who is on the teams.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking in Kuwait before flying here for meetings with Saudi officials, explained the American request to Russia. “In our effort to build diplomatic pressure,” she said, “we look to Russia and France, because of their unique ability to communicate with Saddam Hussein, to convince him that the only way out is to change course.”

France, like Russia, has long ties of sympathy and commerce to Iraq, and American officials said that French leaders are also considering a separate approach to Saddam. But the French commitment to do so was “less clear” than Moscow’s, a senior American official said.

“The Russians in particular and the French to some extent have had influence over Saddam Hussein in the past,” said the State Department spokesman, James Rubin. “The idea is that they would be in the best position to convey to him the steeliness of the will of the international community to resolve this problem.”

The Russian intervention is another indication of American reluctance to get into a military confrontation with Saddam that could break international solidarity.

“When we feel we’ve exhausted all diplomatic options, you’ll know it,” a senior American official said.

“But we’re taking a deliberate, diplomatic approach. We want to see a diplomatic solution. It is the strength and unity of the international community that has the best chance of succeeding,” he said.

The latest crisis with Iraq began on Oct. 29 when Iraq vowed to expel American weapons inspectors working for the United Nations and to shoot down American U-2 spy planes. The inspectors were part of teams monitoring Iraq’s compliance with U.N. resolutions demanding that it destroy all its weapons of mass destruction. The American inspectors were thrown out of the country on Friday, and the United Nations pulled out most of the other inspectors as well.

The Russian commitment on Sunday came in a series of telephone calls between President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin and their foreign ministers, Albright and Yevgeny Primakov.

The Russians have come out most strongly against the use of force against Iraq, and many American officials still blame Primakov, then working for Mikhail Gorbachev, for trying to forestall the allied attack to drive Iraq out of Kuwait six years ago. But American officials said the Russian effort may be the best chance remaining to persuade Saddam to let weapons inspectors return without warfare.

Clinton and Albright have also spoken with President Jacques Chirac of France, and his foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine. Chirac condemned Iraq on Sunday and said France was “in solidarity with the U.N. and the United States in this crisis.”

The announcement of an imminent diplomatic approach to Saddam seemed in part intended to reassure nervous Arab countries that the West was not interested in rushing to war. Arab newspapers have been contrasting the American willingness to pressure Iraq with its reluctance to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to come to better, faster terms with the Palestinians.

But the announcement also provided welcome distraction from Albright’s brief and embarrassing visit to Doha, Qatar, to an American-sponsored economic conference boycotted by nearly every Arab country despite intense American diplomatic pressure on them to show up.

In fact, Albright’s daylong shuttling from Qatar to Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was made necessary because their foreign ministers refused to attend the Doha conference, which Israel did attend.

This linkage between Arab unhappiness with Netanyahu and reluctance to support American military pressure against Saddam is acknowledged privately by American officials, who in public try to keep the issues separate.

In her speech to the business and trade officials in Doha - their numbers limited by the boycott from countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and even Morocco - Albright urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to find the courage to make peace.