U.N. to Set Gulf Truce Date Today : Secretary General Says Iran, Iraq OK a Cease-Fire

With an agreement all but final to end the eight-year-old Persian Gulf War, Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced Sunday that he will set the date of a cease-fire this afternoon.

“I have informed the Security Council that the two sides agreed to a cease-fire followed by direct talks under my auspices,” Perez de Cuellar said. He declined to predict how soon after the truce the face-to-face talks between Iraq and Iran would begin, but he said it would be “my preference” that they be held in New York.

Iran on Sunday had set the stage for the day’s later developments here by welcoming the decision announced Saturday by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Hussein dropped Iraq’s demand for direct talks with the Iranians as a precondition for a cease-fire provided that the Tehran government would agree to high-level direct talks beginning immediately after a truce.

Tehran Announcement

A Tehran Radio broadcast monitored in Cyprus on Sunday morning said that Iran accepted Iraq’s demand for direct talks under U.N. auspices, once a cease-fire is implemented. The Iranian acceptance was conveyed to Perez de Cuellar by Tehran’s foreign minister at U.N. headquarters.

Members of the 15-nation Security Council were called away from their weekends to hear the results of Perez de Cuellar’s final talks with representatives of the warring nations. The closed-door meeting of the council lasted nearly two hours.

Afterward, U.S. Ambassador Vernon A. Walters declined to characterize a cease-fire as something that has been “signed, sealed and delivered,” but he said, “We are taking further steps on the road to peace.”

Britain’s ambassador, Crispin Tickell, called the remaining problems “mostly logistical.” He warned that some may be “quite difficult,” but he voiced the hope that the cease-fire will come as Perez de Cuellar predicted.

While Perez de Cuellar said nothing Sunday about the specific truce date he may have in mind, U.N. aides predicted that a date of Aug. 19 or 20 is likely.

The secretary general met twice with each side here after Iraq’s Hussein made his Saturday announcement in Baghdad that he would agree to a truce if it were followed immediately by direct talks between the Baghdad and Tehran governments. Negotiations had been stalled for many days because Iraq was insisting that face-to-face talks must come before a truce date was fixed while Iran was demanding that a cease-fire be proclaimed first.

Perez de Cuellar conferred Sunday morning with Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, to receive Tehran’s official reaction to Iraq’s Saturday compromise.

Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ismat Kittani, met with Perez de Cuellar on Saturday and twice again on Sunday.

After his first meeting with the secretary general, Kittani stressed that Iraq is still seeking an “unequivocal and clear” commitment from Tehran, but he beamed during a picture-taking session in Perez de Cuellar’s office.

“This is a great day,” Kittani said as he shook Perez de Cuellar’s hand, “a very historic day.”

Kittani returned later for another meeting with the secretary general, leaving afterward without comment.

There were reports that the Iraqis were concerned about the level at which the expected direct talks would take place.

Perez de Cuellar to Decide

Iran’s Velayati, leaving U.N. headquarters after what he called his 10th meeting with Perez de Cuellar, said the time and place of the direct talks would be left to the secretary general to decide. He said nothing about the level--ministerial or other--at which the face-to-face encounter would take place.

The Security Council announced that it will hold another closed-door meeting this morning, at which it is expected to hear details about the formation of a U.N. truce observer force to monitor compliance by both sides, once a cease-fire is in place.

The current push for Iran-Iraq peace began July 18, when Iran, after a year of hedging, announced its full acceptance of Security Council Resolution 598 demanding an end to the war. Under that resolution, adopted in July, 1987, the cease-fire is to begin with a halt to all fighting, to be followed by a withdrawal of forces to “internationally recognized” borders and an exchange of prisoners of war.

Impartial Panel

After the first steps, an impartial panel is to be convened by the Security Council to assess responsibility for starting the war, in which a million people have been killed.

Tehran Radio on Sunday broadcast the text of a message that it said Velayati gave Perez de Cuellar at the United Nations.

“Now that Iraq’s precondition has been eliminated from the process of current efforts,” Tehran Radio said, “the secretary general may immediately begin . . . implementing Security Council Resolution 598 and, with the announcement of a cease-fire, proceed to implementation of other clauses of the resolution.”

Iran, it added, “continues to be prepared to accept direct talks within the framework of Resolution 598 and the secretary general’s implementation plan and under the supervision of the U.N. secretary general.”

Truce Observer Plans

A team of U.N. experts traveled to both Baghdad and Tehran two weeks ago to discuss the dispatch of U.N. truce observers and the delineation of the border between Iran and Iraq. About 250 members of the truce observer force are expected to be deployed along the 750-mile border, stretching from Turkey to the Persian Gulf.

Iran now holds about 50,000 Iraqi prisoners of war while more than 40,000 Iranians are estimated to be held by Iraq. Iraq has captured the bulk of the prisoners it holds during the first half of this year.

A government statement issued Sunday in Kuwait praised Iraq’s decision to drop its precondition for a cease-fire, calling Hussein’s change of policy “an effective approach to the process of peace that we hope will prevail throughout the gulf region to consolidate confidence among its nations. . . .”

Kuwait’s neighbor, Bahrain, issued a government statement calling Iraq’s about-face “a matter which will be of benefit and stability for the nations of the region.”

The oil-rich sheikdoms that line the western side of the gulf provided the bulk of Iraq’s economic assistance during the war and were believed to have brought considerable pressure to bear on the Hussein government to drop its negotiating demands.

Shannon reported from the United Nations and Wallace reported from Nicosia, Cyprus.