Gulf Calm as U.N. Leader Arrives in Tehran to Begin His Peace Mission

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, undertaking a weeklong peace mission to the Persian Gulf, arrived in Tehran on Friday for talks with Iranian leaders on the U.N. Security Council’s demand for a cease-fire in the seven-year-old war with Iraq.

The so-called “tanker war” against commercial shipping in the gulf, which flared up suddenly a few days before Perez de Cuellar’s arrival, abated just as abruptly Friday as both sides observed what was expected to be a de facto truce while the secretary general is in the region.

However, diplomats and other analysts in the region said that despite several conciliatory statements by Iranian leaders over the past several days, there appeared to be little likelihood that Perez de Cuellar will be able to secure Iran’s acceptance of a permanent truce under the terms outlined in Resolution 598, which was adopted unanimously by the Security Council on July 20.

Iraq has said that it will comply with the resolution if Iran does, but the Iranian leadership continues to insist that parts of it are unacceptable and must be rewritten to include a strong condemnation of Iraq as the aggressor in the war that started in September, 1980.

The United States, whose naval buildup in the region has made the search for a diplomatic settlement of the war more urgent, has said that it will ask the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Iran unless it accepts the resolution during Perez de Cuellar’s mission.

The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported Perez de Cuellar’s arrival from Paris on Friday night, saying he was met at the Tehran airport by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, with whom he will confer today and Sunday. The U.N. chief is also expected to meet with President Ali Khamenei and Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani before leaving Monday for Baghdad and talks with the Iraqi leadership.

Khamenei, in a Friday prayer sermon in Tehran hours before Perez de Cuellar’s arrival, reiterated the conciliatory-sounding but essentially uncompromising position toward the U.N. resolution that Tehran has been expounding for several weeks.

“There are some positive points in the resolution and therefore we have not rejected it,” Khamenei said in remarks broadcast by Tehran Radio. “But if the world wants peace in the region . . . the way to achieve (this) is to name the one who threatens security, the one who began the war, the one who started the tanker war and the one who launched air strikes against civilian areas. Unless this source is named, the war will continue.”

Khamenei made no reference to Tehran’s two other longstanding demands for ending the war--the overthrow of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein and the payment of substantial “war reparations.”

Observers said this omission was not necessarily significant, since Iran on previous occasions has chosen to emphasize one or another of its three central demands without abandoning any of them.

However, Khamenei also included in his speech a diatribe against the United States that, in the convoluted but common way of Middle Eastern rhetoric, could signify Iran’s willingness to negotiate an end to the war through the United Nations, some observers said.

After noting the “positive points” of Security Council Resolution 598, the Iranian president asserted that the United States had sought to sabotage the cease-fire call but was “forced to appear to accept it” by the other 14 members of the Security Council.

The United States actively supported the resolution and played a pivotal role in securing its adoption. This very fact, however, makes it all the more difficult for Iran to accept, since the leadership continues to derive much of its legitimacy from the struggle against the United States--the “Great Satan” on whom many of the revolution’s failures are blamed.

Thus if Iran is moving closer to accepting a settlement based on the Security Council’s call, Khamenei’s remarks could be an attempt to prepare Iranian public opinion by creating the face-saving fiction that the resolution was a diplomatic defeat for the United States.

Nevertheless, diplomats in the region said they doubt that Iran is ready to accept the resolution as written, or indeed in any form that would also make it acceptable to Iraq.

They noted that since the conflict began, Tehran has made it almost an article of faith that peace could come only with Hussein’s ouster. For Iran now to accept virtually the same terms that it has rejected all along would be tantamount to an admission of defeat. Moreover, to do so while U.S. warships are patrolling the gulf, protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian attack, would be an added humiliation.

Outlook Pessimistic

Since Perez de Cuellar’s mandate from the Security Council is not to renegotiate the resolution but to elicit Iran’s “definitive and unambiguous response” to it, the chances of his mission succeeding are slim, diplomats said.

They added that they think Iran will try to “play for more time” by sending Perez de Cuellar away with the impression that it is still willing negotiate.

This, they noted, could serve Iran’s interests in two ways. The more reasonable Iran appears to be in not rejecting peace efforts out of hand, the more pressure there will be on Iraq not to resume the tanker war after Perez de Cuellar returns to New York next week, analysts said. If, on the other hand, Iraq does resume its air strikes against ships carrying Iranian oil out of the gulf, it will be more difficult to portray Iran as the sole aggressor and the only side that should be subject to an arms embargo, they added.

In Italy, meanwhile, the government told Parliament that an Italian naval task force will sail for the Persian Gulf on Tuesday if Perez de Cuellar fails to arrange a cease-fire between the two warring nations.

The decision satisfied demands by the Communist Party and small left-wing parties to delay the departure of the eight-ship force at least until Perez de Cuellar completes his mediation trip to Tehran and Baghdad.

Even though the guns fell silent in the gulf in advance of Perez de Cuellar’s arrival, the usual threats continued on Iranian television and radio. The occasion was the end of a formal 40-day period of mourning for the nearly 300 Iranian pilgrims killed July 31 in clashes with Saudi police in the holy city of Mecca.

In Tehran and other Iranian cities, millions of Iranians marched through the streets vowing revenge against Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Meanwhile, U.S. Navy Secretary James Webb took advantage of the tense calm that settled over the Persian Gulf to board the flagship La Salle and the helicopter carrier Guadalcanal on an inspection visit to the Navy’s Middle East Force.

A Navy source said Webb delivered a “pep talk” to the 1,200-man crew of the Guadalcanal, which carries mine-hunting helicopters.