Iran Relenting on Face-to-Face Talks With Iraq

Iraq appeared to be winning the first round in its bid for direct peace negotiations with Iran as Iranian officials conceded Thursday that they would accept face-to-face talks if asked by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

The Iranians made the concession in public statements in which they insisted that they have accepted the demands of last summer’s Security Council Resolution 598 calling for a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War.

Iran’s acting Ambassador Mohammed Mahallati avoided a yes or no answer when asked if Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati will eventually sit at the same table with his Iraqi counterpart, Tarik Aziz. But he said that “we will cooperate” in any demand by Perez de Cuellar.

Separate Meetings

Perez de Cuellar voiced his preference Thursday for face-to-face talks rather than the indirect talks he conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, meeting separately with the two foreign ministers. Neither Velayati nor Aziz appeared at U.N. headquarters Thursday as the secretary general studied Iran’s responses to his initial peace proposals. Iraq has not yet provided its answers.

A U.N. official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, commented, “They should both be in the same room by next week.”

Perez de Cuellar has said he hopes to be able to set a date for a cease-fire after a military team he dispatched to the region last week returns to New York on Tuesday.

“I am not stuck,” the secretary general said in reply to a reporter who asked if the negotiations have stalled. “The talks are making progress.”

In the war, the two sides continued battling for advantages that might help them in bargaining on an eventual cease-fire, news agencies reported.

Iran said it launched a counterattack on the central front to expel Iraqi forces from the region of Eslamabad. An earlier Iraqi statement said the Iraqi army was pulling out of Iranian territory on the central front.

Iraq said its air force heavily bombed Iranian troops and positions Thursday but mentioned no serious ground fighting on the long battlefront.

The 15-nation Security Council held a closed session Thursday to discuss both the Iran-Iraq settlement and a six-month extension of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL). The UNIFIL extension is expected to be approved at a public meeting this afternoon.

Together with the renewal of the nine-nation, 5,844-man force which has been assigned to peacekeeping duty in Lebanon since 1978, the council is scheduled to issue a special appeal for the release of a U.S. Marine, Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, an observer with the U.N. Truce Supervisory Organization who was seized by Shia Muslims last February. Higgins’ wife will visit Perez de Cuellar and observe the council’s debate on the appeal for his release.

Jackson Call Reported

In another hostage-related development, the Rev. Jesse Jackson telephoned Perez de Cuellar on Thursday to ask his aid in arranging a meeting with Velayati to discuss the freeing of nine American civilians held by pro-Iranian Shia Muslims in Lebanon. Velayati had expressed sympathy Tuesday for the plight of the hostages, but Mahallati denied that any message from Jackson had been received by the Iranian mission Thursday.

Jackson issued a statement Thursday confirming his message to Perez de Cuellar and saying he told the secretary general “that if at some point in the future he found that my services could be useful in gaining the release of the captives, I stood ready to do whatever I could within the bounds of the moral and legal law to help.”

Foreign Minister Aziz and other Iraqi diplomats kept a low profile despite the charges by Mahallati and Mohammed Javad Zarif, counselor of the Iranian mission, that Iraq is trying to “sabotage” peace efforts.

No Propaganda Effort

“We didn’t come here to make propaganda,” said Ambassador Esmat Kittani, head of Iraq’s permanent mission.

Iraq has maintained its demand for face-to-face negotiations but has kept quiet about its other objectives. Aziz is expected to meet with Perez de Cuellar today and begin more detailed discussions.

Aziz, in a meeting Thursday with British Ambassador Crispin Tickell, raised the issue of the Shatt al Arab waterway, long an issue of dispute between Iran and Iraq.

Iraq will press for restoration of its former sovereignty over the entire waterway, Iraq’s principal channel to the Persian Gulf, according to a diplomat who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous. The waterway was divided between Iran and Iraq by the 1975 Treaty of Algiers, a document that Iraqis contend they were forced to sign under military pressure from Iran’s late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.