U.N. Observers in Place to Enforce Iran-Iraq Cease-Fire

Blue-bereted U.N. truce observers began patrolling the rugged border between Iran and Iraq Friday, hours before the start of a cease-fire in one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th Century.

Iraqi officers acted as guides for the first contingent of unarmed observers who fanned out along the 700-mile frontier that stretches over desert, marshes and mountains, Swedish army Capt. Johan Persen said.

“We are setting up a front-line base in the operational zone,” Persen said from the main U.N. communications center in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. “And the first observers have already started patrolling the border between the two countries.”

The senior U.N. official said the observers were expecting nothing spectacular when the cease-fire took hold at 7 a.m. Saturday (8 p.m. PDT Friday).

“But if either side violates it, our communications are set up such that New York will know within the hour,” he said, referring to the speed with which the U.N. headquarters will be informed of truce violations.

As an unofficial truce held for a 12th day, calm prevailed in Baghdad, where calls to prayer echoed through 104-degree heat. The wide avenues lined with palm and gum trees carried posters of President Saddam Hussein.

Guns fell silent when U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced on Aug. 8 that the warring Persian Gulf neighbors had agreed to the formal cease-fire date and direct negotiations beginning Aug. 25 in Geneva.

In an apparent demonstration of trust in the cease-fire, Iraq announced plans to reopen Basra international airport Saturday after a nearly 8-year closure.

Official Iraqi media gave no details of flights to be made from Basra, a strategic and heavily fortified southern port that remains within range of Iranian missiles and had come under heavy Iranian attack during the war.

An estimated 1 million people have been killed or wounded in the Persian Gulf war. It began in September, 1980, with land battles, then escalated with exchanges of missile attacks on cities and assaults on neutral shipping that threatened world oil supplies.

The official Iraqi News Agency said 67 “blue berets” of the peacekeeping force known as the U.N. Iran-Iraq Military Observers Group headed by Maj. Gen. Slavko Jovic of Yugoslavia arrived in the southern port of Basra Friday.

Other observers of the 24-nation, 350-member force were deployed in Iraq’s northernmost province of Kurdistan and other strategic border points.

Iran’s official Tehran Radio reported that 25 observers had taken up positions in the southern Iranian city of Dezful. About 175 U.N. troops were expected to take up positions along each side of the border before dawn Saturday.

“We always have to behave calmly. If there is any shooting, we will reach for our binoculars, not for guns,” Persen said of the role of his force, consisting mostly of officers ranging in rank from captain to lieutenant colonel.

The prospects for peace, however, did not deter Iran and Iraq from exchanging harsh verbal criticism.

Iran’s powerful speaker of Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, told worshipers at weekly prayers in a Tehran mosque that hostilities in the future could not be ruled out.

Rafsanjani Quoted

The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Rafsanjani, also Iran’s acting military commander, as saying that the cease-fire had thwarted Iraqi ambitions in the war and that the fighting forced Iran to rely more on home industries and attain self-sufficiency “especially in the military hardware.”

Iran’s naval commander, Rear Adm. Mohammad Hussein Malekzadegan , told the news agency that Iranian naval forces would “maintain security” in the gulf and “continue to exercise our right to inspect ships.”

In what appeared to be yet another Iranian muscle-flexing exercise, Iranian President Ali Khamenei visited units of the elite Revolutionary Guards--many of whom oppose an end to the war before Iraq’s defeat.

Khamenei was quoted as saying “Muslim combatants” should remain in the war zones as long as their presence is needed--a hint that he may oppose a general Iranian demobilization.

Cause of War

The official Iraqi newspaper, the Baghdad Observer, repeated the Iraqi position that Iran provoked the war.

“While Iran launched its all-out military attack against Iraq Sept. 4, 1980, the actual causes of the war and aggression date back to quite an early date,” the newspaper said.

The Iraqi News Agency also voiced skepticism in a dispatch on the cease-fire.

“It all depends on the situation that shapes up after the official cease-fire goes into effect Aug. 20, 1988,” it said.

‘Vigilant Attitude’

“In the meantime, Iraq will maintain a vigilant attitude, counting on the unity between the people and the leadership and the preparedness of the armed forces to face up to any maneuvers,” it said.

The truce is a culmination of U.N. mediation efforts prompted by Iran’s sudden acceptance last month of a cease-fire resolution, which calls for peace talks, an exchange of prisoners of war, a withdrawal of troops to internationally recognized boundaries and an inquiry into who started the war.

The U.N. force is made up of officers from Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, Denmark, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Senegal and Zambia on the Iraqi side, and officers from Argentina, Australia, Ghana, Finland, Italy, India, Kenya, Nigeria, New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey and Yugoslavia on the Iranian side.