U.N. Bid Apparently Halts Gulf Attacks

After one of the most violent weeks in the Persian Gulf tanker war, attacks on shipping by Iraq and Iran had ceased by Monday, apparently in conjunction with a United Nations effort to mediate an end to the conflict.

There have been no attacks by Iraq on Iranian shipping since Saturday, while Iran has refrained from hitting civilian ships in the gulf since last Thursday.

The de facto truce in the gulf came after a flare-up in which Iraq claimed to have hit 15 Iranian tankers in the northern Persian Gulf in one week, while Iran hit seven ships during four days in retaliation for the Iraqi attacks.

The slowdown in fighting is apparently linked to a visit to the region by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar scheduled to begin Thursday.

Iran has promised to exercise “self-restraint” during Perez de Cuellar’s visit, which will take him to Tehran and Baghdad. Iraq is also expected to hold off during the talks.

Perez de Cuellar is being sent by the U.N. Security Council in an effort to get a definitive answer from Iran to a Security Council resolution ordering a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War. The resolution, adopted July 20, also calls for a withdrawal from occupied territory and an exchange of prisoners.

Iraq agreed to the truce, but Iran expressed reservations.

The United States has said that unless Iran agrees to the cease-fire unconditionally, it will press for adoption of a second Security Council resolution calling for mandatory sanctions against Tehran--principally a worldwide embargo on arms shipments to the revolutionary government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Perez de Cuellar’s mission appeared doomed from the outset, however, by an Iranian statement demanding that Iraq be condemned as the aggressor in the war and punished. The war began in September, 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran.

One Western diplomat in the region said it is likely that the lull in the tanker war will last for the duration of the U.N. official’s visit but that expectations are for a renewed surge of attacks on shipping and oil-export facilities in early October.

The Netherlands announced Monday that it will join the growing naval presence in the Persian Gulf by sending two minesweepers next week.

The Dutch ships will join navy vessels from the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and Italy, which are either on station or en route to the gulf to protect the shipping of the respective countries and to search for mines.

In a related development, Kuwait’s foreign minister, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, began a mission to Jordan and the Soviet Union in an effort to marshal support after what Kuwait has described as three missile attacks against its territory by Iran.

The missiles were believed to have been fired from Iranian-held territory in Iraq, at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. Sources in the gulf region and in Washington have said that at least two of the missiles were Silkworm surface-to-surface missiles of a kind that Iran is known to have obtained from China.

Visit to Moscow

After visiting Jordan’s King Hussein, Sabah was to fly to Moscow with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz for talks that are linked to the U.N. peace moves.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Larijani arrived in Moscow on Monday in an apparent effort to head off any decision by the Security Council to impose sanctions against Iran for failing to accept the cease-fire resolution.

There have been reports recently that the once-strained relations between Tehran and Moscow have warmed dramatically.