Iran Ambiguously Accepts U.N. Cease-Fire Resolution

Iran on Friday declared it would accept the “implementation” of the U.N. plan for a cease-fire in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War but stopped short of formally endorsing the world body’s peace proposal.

American officials said that the Iranian statements were ambiguous and that they remained skeptical that Iran intends to abide by the U.N. cease-fire resolution. U.S. officials said the Reagan Administration will continue to press for a complete cutoff of arms sales to Tehran.

Top-level U.N. officials also had no clear assessment of the Iranian overture, one U.N. source said. “It is a very confused situation,” he said.

Mohammed Ja’affer Mahalati, Iran’s representative at the United Nations, said Friday that Iran has notified the 15-member Security Council that Iran now accepts U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar’s implementation plan for Resolution 598, the 10-point program for ending the Persian Gulf war adopted by the council last July 20.

The acceptance, offered in a letter handed to a Security Council official Thursday, “has removed the only excuse for pressing for an arms embargo resolution” against Iran, Mahalati said in an interview.

Iran’s move may signal a weakening of its position on the battlefield and a growing fear in Tehran that the United Nations is moving rapidly toward imposing an arms embargo, U.S. officials said. The officials suggested it could be a significant concession or simply a ploy to further delay a vote on the embargo and allow Tehran to rearm for a new ground offensive against Iraq.

Over the past 10 days, the war has escalated with Iran and Iraq exchanging missile attacks on civilian areas in Tehran and Baghdad. But Iran has been unable to mount a major ground attack because of a shortage of arms and fresh troops, military analysts said.

Iraq accepted the U.N. cease-fire resolution shortly after it was adopted, but Iran had refused to endorse the proposal, raising numerous objections to the plan’s terms and frequently shifting its positions. Iran’s chief demand has been that the United Nations declare Iraq the aggressor in the bloody conflict before the other steps in the peace plan are implemented.

The two countries have long been at odds over the disputed Shatt al Arab waterway as well as Iranian support of Iraq’s Kurdish rebels, and in September, 1980, Iraq invaded Iran’s Khuzistan province.

Mixed Signals

The Iranian note to the Security Council sends mixed signals and does not constitute formal acceptance of the peace plan, the State Department said late Friday.

“We hope (full acceptance) will be stated to the Security Council in a formal communication from the Iranian government,” the department said. “Unless Iran is willing to state this position clearly, however, we continue to believe that the Security Council should move without further delay to impose an arms embargo against Iran as the non-complying party.”

An Administration source, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the Iranian action “an interesting signal” but said it is too vague to be considered a promising step toward peace in the gulf.

In the letter, Mahalati said, the Iranian government “has accepted the implementation of Resolution 598 on the basis on the outlined plan of the Secretary General of the United Nations. And it has been Iraq that has always stood in the way by pursuing a policy of procrastination and division. At this juncture, I believe that the Security Council should let the Secretary General pursue working on the line of the outline plan that he has already proposed.”

‘Operative Word’

The United States demands Iran’s unconditional acceptance of the U.N. plan, the Administration official said. “The operative word is unconditional. We’re not sure this (Mahalati’s letter) constitutes that,” he said.

The U.N. plan calls for an immediate cease-fire and a return to prewar borders, which would mean that Iran would have to return the strategic Faw Peninsula and other territory seized from Iraq in 1986. The plan also includes a mutual return of prisoners and an international fund for rebuilding the two countries.

But in a concession to Iran, the resolution also calls for the United Nations to appoint an impartial body to inquire into “responsibility for the conflict.”

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that whatever the Iranians “may be hinting or saying, they have to communicate it to the Security Council.”

Perez de Cuellar last year made several trips to Tehran and Baghdad, trying to secure agreement on implementation of the cease-fire plan. Last Dec. 10 he told the Security Council that his efforts to persuade Iran to accept the cease-fire had failed.

Since then, momentum has been growing for an arms embargo against Iran, although the Soviet Union and China have not yet declared their support. However, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, on his recent visit to Moscow, obtained a Soviet pledge of support for an embargo if Iran continues to reject the U.N. peace plan.

Iran’s latest U.N. maneuver may have been coordinated with the Soviets to head off the embargo, U.S. officials said.

Times researcher Eileen V. Quigley contributed to this story.