Tehran Reports Break in Gulf Talks Deadlock

Iran announced Saturday that it has reached agreement with Iraq to break a deadlock in their continuing efforts to reach a permanent peace agreement in the Persian Gulf War.

Returning from talks at the United Nations in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said that the progress is based on a compromise proposed by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is mediating the negotiations.

“The U.N. chief put forward proposals and both sides agreed in principle,” Velayati was quoted as saying by IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, in a report from Tehran monitored here.

Iraqis ‘Surprised’

But within hours, Baghdad expressed “surprise” at the report.

Nizar Hamdoun, an undersecretary for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, told Reuters news agency late Saturday that his nation is still studying the U.N. chief’s plan.

“We are surprised at the statement because, as far as we know, the last round of talks in New York ended with the Iranian side’s position still unchanged toward the necessary measures to fix the cease-fire agreement,” Hamdoun said.

Iran and Iraq began a cease-fire Aug. 20 after nearly eight years of warfare that cost the two nations an estimated 1 million dead.

Talks for a permanent settlement of the conflict opened in Geneva on Aug. 25, but the discussions, conducted under U.N. auspices, have been bogged down since.

Possible Compromise

According to IRNA, the points of the new deadlock-breaking compromise include:

-- Troop withdrawals by both sides to internationally recognized borders within 15 days.

-- Immediate exchange of prisoners of war.

-- Iran’s ceasing to search ships sailing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz en route from the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf.

According to the Iranians, the two sides still have to meet in Geneva to conclude details of the compromise. No date for that resumption of the peace talks was announced.

Perez de Cuellar had called Velayati and his Iraqi counterpart, Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, to New York in an effort to resolve the deadlock in the talks.

The hitch appeared to be Iraq’s insistence on discussing the opening of the Shatt al Arab, a 115-mile waterway that forms the southeastern frontier between the two belligerents. The Shatt is Iraq’s only outlet to the sea, but there is a dispute between the two over whether demarcation of the frontier should be along the middle of the waterway or along its bank on the Iranian side.

Reports from New York suggested that Perez de Cuellar’s compromise involved postponing the Shatt al Arab issue. In return, Iran agreed to stop the searching of ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Velayati was quoted Saturday as saying that once Perez de Cuellar’s proposed three-point compromise is implemented, the two sides will move ahead to discussion of an overall peace settlement.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s first deputy premier, Taha Yassin Ramadan, was quoted in a Kuwaiti newspaper as reiterating Iraq’s stand that a 1975 agreement placing the border in the middle of the Shatt had been canceled.

The Shatt has been closed since the war erupted in September, 1980. An estimated 75 ships are stuck in the waterway near the Iraqi port of Basra, and navigation is prevented by accumulated silt, mines and pontoon bridges.

One possible solution to the long-standing dispute was recently broached in Iraq--the suggestion that the Baghdad government may divert the water of the Shatt to form a new river or expand an existing channel to the west of the current waterway.

This would place Iraq in control of its outlet to the sea. But it would also leave the Iranian ports of Abadan and Khorramshahr without access to the sea, something certain to be unacceptable to Iran.

Tehran Radio quoted Velayati as saying that during the talks in New York, Iran “did not raise irrelevant issues, such as the matter of the (Shatt al Arab) and we will not permit the other side to enter into such discussions.”