U.S., Soviets Ask World to Cut Off Weapons to Iraq

The United States and Soviet Union, moving swiftly in their first joint attempt to end a post-Cold War international crisis, appealed to the world Friday for an across-the-board arms embargo against Iraq and demanded that it cease its “brutal and illegal” invasion of Kuwait.

In a dramatic episode showing the new and emerging relationship between the superpowers, Secretary of State James A. Baker III cut short a visit to Mongolia to fly the breadth of the Soviet Union to hammer out a common U.S.-Soviet response to the invasion with Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

After meeting for 90 minutes in a second-floor room at Vnukovo-2 airport on the outskirts of Moscow, both men emerged shortly after 9 p.m. local time (11 a.m. PDT) to read a toughly worded statement accusing Iraq, a longtime Soviet ally, of illegal and barbarous action. And they committed their countries to coordinating a worldwide response.

“Today, we take the unusual step of jointly calling on the rest of the international community to join with us in an international cutoff of all arms supplies to Iraq,” said the U.S.-Soviet resolution, whose English-language text was read by Baker before a battery of TV cameras.

The superpowers accused Iraq of “blatant transgression of the basic norms of civilized conduct” and warned its rulers that “governments that engage in blatant aggression must know that the international community cannot and will not acquiesce.” It said Iraq’s troops must be withdrawn “unconditionally.”

The statement did not refer to possible military action, and Shevardnadze said none was planned by the Kremlin. He said he understood from Baker that the Bush Administration, which has imposed a trade embargo on Iraq and frozen its U.S. assets, has no wish to intervene with armed force.

But Baker would not be drawn out on U.S. intentions.

“I don’t think it’s useful to speculate with respect to questions regarding military action,” Baker said as he and Shevardnadze fielded questions at the VIPs-only airport, where Baker’s Boeing 707 brought the weary American entourage after a nearly 9-hour flight from Ulan Bator, Mongolia.

The Kremlin, which on Thursday broke off weapons supplies to Iraq, has been Baghdad’s principal arms supplier for more than 20 years. And Shevardnadze said his country had been forced to make a conscious choice between longstanding ties to the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the logic of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s foreign policy.

“We were forced to take such steps (to condemn Iraq) by the events in Kuwait, in line with the new political thinking,” Shevardnadze said. Baker replied that the joint statement was “even more meaningful” because of the longstanding ties between the Soviets and Iraqis, enshrined in the countries’ 1972 treaty of friendship.

In a larger sense, the joint declaration signaled that Third World countries can no longer exploit superpower rivalry to win military and economic support in quarrels with their neighbors--an ingredient in world politics that made the 1970s and early 1980s often seem like a global chess game played by the United States and Soviet Union, from Ethiopia to Nicaragua.

A principal factor underlying Friday’s extraordinary U.S.-Soviet statement was the desire by both countries to avoid setting some sort of precedent of appeasement, said a senior State Department official traveling with Baker back to the United States.

“If you allow someone to engage in this kind of action and get away with it, you’re going to invite more of it--and not only in this case, but maybe others, not necessarily limited to Iraq and not necessarily limited to (the Persian Gulf) region,” he said during a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland.

Baker, who had met with Shevardnadze in the Siberian city of Irkutsk before flying Thursday to Mongolia, had briefed his host then on the massing of Iraqi troops near Kuwait. But Shevardnadze said he had nonetheless been surprised by Baghdad’s subsequent drive into the oil-rich emirate.

“I really didn’t think that the Iraqis would engage in such aggression against such a defenseless country, a country which is a threat to no one,” the Soviet foreign minister admitted.

The senior State Department official traveling with Baker confirmed that the initiative for the joint statement had come from the United States.

Asked what might happen if the current U.S.-Soviet efforts against Iraq do not work, the senior official replied, “Well, we’ve just begun this process.”

In a scathing commentary Friday, the official Soviet news agency Tass also expressed shock at the Iraqi action and indicated that the Kremlin was fearful of military conflict boiling over in an area near its own southern border, just as it had been during the long Iran-Iraq war.

Although there was no expectation that the U.S.-Soviet resolution would suffice to end the crisis over Kuwait, representatives from both countries hailed the document as proof of the new working relationship between the superpowers.

“I think it’s natural today that the United States and the Soviet Union would find themselves in agreement with respect to what’s happened,” Baker said. “This would not necessarily have been the case at an earlier time, and we might have been in earlier days viewing this very tragic action through an East-West prism.”

“Even if this joint statement does not stop the crisis, it sets an important precedent for the future,” said a Soviet Foreign Ministry specialist on the United States, who accompanied Shevardnadze to the airport.

Reminded that his country had roundly condemned the Bush Administration for last December’s Panama invasion and that the Kremlin itself had withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan only this past year, the Soviet diplomat said: “The key word is ‘past.’ All that now is in the past. Now we absolutely oppose violence as a way to solve international disputes.”

The senior State Department official agreed that the joint statement is “a measure of how the two of us (the Soviet Union and the United States) can in fact deal with issues that in the past we would not have dealt with.

“And in my mind,” he added, “it’s symptomatic of how the agenda we have with them is an expanding agenda. We face a situation where threats to peace don’t exist in Europe any more, but they exist elsewhere.”

The statement on Kuwait was the first orchestrated U.S.-Soviet joint response to a sudden international crisis, but in the past 12 months their positions on protracted conflicts like Namibia and Cambodia have merged. Although the Baker-Shevardnadze talks in Irkutsk failed to result in accord on Afghanistan, the longest-running regional conflict dividing the superpowers, the two countries are reportedly closer than ever to a solution.

Baker insisted that the United States and Soviet Union had taken “concrete actions” and not just engaged in “simple rhetoric” on the Kuwait invasion, and both he and Shevardnadze said the superpowers would stay in contact about subsequent actions that might be needed.

They also called on the Arab League, the Islamic Conference and individual Arab states to “take all possible steps” to obtain implementation of a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that “Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces.”

Shevardnadze said there has not yet been any superpower contact with China to win its approval for an international arms boycott of Iraq. He said, however, that the Chinese would be approached.

Baker and Shevardnadze also warned that the maltreatment of their fellow citizens caught up in the hostilities could have dire repercussions. According to Baker, there are 3,800 American residents in Kuwait, and the Soviet foreign minister said that a “big Soviet colony” of 7,000 to 8,000 advisers and other personnel lives in Iraq.

“We expect the safety and welfare of Americans to be safeguarded, and there would be very severe consequences if that were not the case,” Baker declared. Shevardnadze said basically the same thing about his countrymen in Iraq.

Dahlburg reported from Moscow; Mann reported from Moscow and Shannon, Ireland.

KUWAIT AT A GLANCE Geography: About size of New Jersey; in northeast corner of Arabian peninsula. Hot, dry and almost entirely desert; only 0.05% of territory is arable. Flat landscape relieved mainly by modern office buildings, apartment towers and hotels. Economy: A founding member of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Has one of world’s largest oil reserves and one of highest per-capita incomes. But decline of oil market by 1982 left it selling less than one-fourth of oil it was shipping earlier. People: Less than half of 2 million population--41%--is native Kuwaiti. Rest are mostly Palestinians, Indians, Pakistanis and Egyptians who have found work on every level, from government executives and doctors to laborers. Islam is official religion--Sunni Muslims are dominant--and Arabic the official language, but English is widely used. Government: Monarchy ruled by emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah. His family has dominated Kuwait since 18th Century. Recent history: British protectorate from 1899 until June 19, 1961. No sooner had Kuwait become independent than Baghdad claimed emirate as its own, saying it had been integral part of Iraq’s Basra province under Ottoman Empire. Baghdad massed troops on border but withdrew when Britain objected. British force was sent in, followed by Arab League force, and two years later Iraq recognized Kuwait’s independence. But border dispute remained. Twice, in 1967 and 1973, Iraq occupied small areas of northern Kuwait. Despite history of hostility, Kuwait sided with Iraq in 1980-88 war with Iran. Sources: Associated Press; Reuters