Foreigners Can’t Go: Iraq : U.N. Rejects Annexation of Kuwait

Iraq today clarified the position of foreigners within its borders and made it clear the vast majority will not be allowed to leave, the United States said.

In what appeared to be an ominous turn in the Persian Gulf crisis, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said official Iraqi explanations of the status of foreigners had become more precisely defined within the last 24 hours: “The position of the government of Iraq continues to be that diplomats may leave but that private foreigners are not able to do so.”

It was the first time Iraq had specified it intended to hold the foreigners within its borders.

Boucher estimated there are 400 Americans in Iraq and 3,000 in Kuwait. Presumably, Iraq considers that its frontiers now include Kuwait.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council today unanimously expressed outrage over Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait on Wednesday, declaring it “null and void,” and called on all nations to repudiate the puppet Kuwaiti regime.

Iraq scorned the resolution, which is considered legally binding on all U.N. members.

In Cairo, Arab leaders gathered today for a high-stakes summit on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait but put off formal talks for one day.

The Arab summit had been scheduled to start today, but the leaders instead held preparatory talks while waiting for more participants to arrive.

Those on hand included top-level envoys from Iraq and the deposed emir of Kuwait, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, who wept upon arrival when an Egyptian military band played the Kuwait national anthem in his honor.

Iraq President Saddam Hussein, who set the crisis in motion, was not attending the Cairo gathering.

Iraq today canceled its multibillion-dollar debt to Kuwait.

Thousands of American troops poured into Saudi Arabia today and reportedly took up positions within seven miles of the Iraqi border. Iraq’s envoy to the Cairo summit denounced the deployment as “overt U.S. threats to the Arab nation.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, in his first public comment on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, today called it “the most horrible aggression” in the Arab world’s modern history.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III today visited another of Iraq’s neighbors, Turkey, and assured officials of full support from NATO if Turkey, too, becomes a target of Iraqi intimidation.

Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency today quoted villagers on the Iraqi side of the border with Turkey as saying Iraq has started beefing up its forces along the frontier. Turkey’s defense minister denied the report, which comes two days after Turkey effectively shut down pipelines carrying Iraqi oil.

On the economic front, delegates from industrialized nations gathered in Paris today to assess the impact of the international boycott against Iraq, imposed to punish Baghdad for the invasion. Iraq is the world’s second-largest exporter of crude after Saudi Arabia.

Also today, the White House made a new call for other nations to join the multinational military effort. The Soviet Union refused, but said it might go along if the United Nations organized a similar operation.