Arabs Put Off Summit After Iraqis Balk

Arab heads of state postponed an emergency summit Thursday after the Iraqi delegation balked at meeting with Kuwait’s deposed emir while the region’s top political leaders worked in advance, trying to negotiate an end to Iraq’s occupation of the small Persian Gulf emirate.

Egyptian leaders were attempting late into the night to win consensus on a compromise that would include an Arab military force to supervise Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait and a provision that would allow Kuwaiti citizens to decide the future government of the emirate, according to sources close to the negotiations.

The Arab force, which might include troops from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and others among the 21-nation Arab League, would be deployed on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border as a peacekeeping force until a long-term resolution of the territorial and financial disputes between the two countries can be achieved, the sources said.

The back-room horse-trading in advance of the rescheduled summit today represented what Arab leaders admit is their last chance for a diplomatic resolution to the occupation, which Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, breaking a weeklong silence, denounced as “the most horrible aggression the Arab nation has known in its modern history.”

New American troops flooded into Saudi Arabia on Thursday and on to defensive positions near the Kuwaiti border, while Iraq’s ambassador to Greece warned that Iraq is prepared to deploy chemical weapons to defend itself in any armed conflict.

“We possess very destructive chemical weapons, and we will use them if attacked,” the envoy, Abdel Fatah al Khereji, told reporters at a news conference in Athens.

Still defying overwhelming international condemnation of the incursion, Baghdad announced it was unilaterally canceling Iraq’s multibillion-dollar war debt to Kuwait in the wake of its annexation of the emirate a day earlier.

Iraq also asked all foreign embassies in Kuwait to relocate to Baghdad, declaring that the diplomatic missions “no longer have official status and became illegal” in the wake of the annexation resolution.

The U.N. Security Council, in its first unanimous vote on the crisis, flatly declared the annexation “null and void” and called on all nations not to recognize the merger, directly or indirectly.

But Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a statement to Iraq’s official news agency, defiantly called the union “final and irreversible,” and diplomats in Cairo said the last hope for negotiating a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the crisis was by closing Arab ranks against the belligerent Iraqi leader while leaving the door open to compromising with him.

In fact, there were signs that some of Hussein’s strongest Arab backers in the past few days were moving back toward the mainstream and narrowing his window of Arab support.

Jordan, an Iraqi ally which refused to vote for an Arab League resolution last week condemning the invasion, nonetheless has refused to recognize the new provisional government Iraq installed in Kuwait and also has declined to accept Iraq’s recent annexation of the emirate.

Yemen, which abstained twice in U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq and imposing international monetary sanctions, on Thursday joined in the unanimous vote rejecting the annexation. It has now also called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait as a prelude to negotiations to resolve the crisis.

Sources close to the negotiations in Cairo said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak summoned the Arab leaders in a last-ditch effort to find a peaceful solution. But diplomats in Egypt said it is very possible Mubarak will be willing to commit Egyptian troops to the U.S.-backed multinational force now being deployed in Saudi Arabia if the summit fails to produce anything--despite Mubarak’s announcement that he would not commit Egyptian soldiers to serve with “foreign” forces.

Should Iraq fail to agree to a brokered solution to the crisis, “the Egyptians can throw up their hands and say, ‘We went the extra mile, we called a summit, it didn’t work,’ and send in troops to Saudi Arabia,” one Western diplomat said. “It may be a political ploy to sell it at home.”

Officially, Egyptian officials announced they were postponing the summit until this morning because at least two heads of state, from Yemen and Tunisia, were late in arriving.

But sources close to the talks said the Egyptians hoped to closet the delegations in working dinners Thursday night for discussion of a compromise proposal, which would reportedly include a multinational Arab force on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, total withdrawal of Iraqi troops and determination of the emirate’s future by the Kuwaitis themselves.

One key compromise reportedly under discussion to placate the Iraqis would be to leave the deposed Kuwaiti government of Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah in exile pending a decision, presumably through elections, by the Kuwaitis.

“If the people choose the emir (Jabbar), that’s another matter,” said one Egyptian diplomat.

There was no indication before the opening of the summit of whether either Iraq or Kuwait was ready to compromise.

The Iraqi delegation, headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan and Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, arrived in Cairo and immediately announced it would not recognize Sheik Jabbar as Kuwait’s representative to the talks, summit sources said.

One Egyptian Information Ministry official said Iraq had brought a member of its new provisional government in Kuwait, absorbed into the Baghdad hierarchy in the wake of the annexation, and was insisting that he be recognized as the Kuwaiti delegate to the summit.

But an Arab diplomat close to the talks said it could be expected that the Iraqis would mount the objection to representation to strengthen their hand in any substantive discussions.

The Arabs appear to be not yet convinced that Saddam Hussein cannot be bargained with. “The fact that he sent a delegation means that he still wants to talk to the Arab constituency,” one Egyptian official said.

For the Kuwaitis’ part, Thursday represented deposed Sheik Jabbar’s first public appearance since he fled Kuwait for Saudi Arabia on the day of the invasion. The emir and many of his escorts wept as an Egyptian military band played the Kuwait national anthem upon his arrival at Cairo International Airport.

Hours later, a Kuwaiti Embassy spokesman said eagerly: “They have received him as a head of state, al hamdulillah (praise God)!”

Before his own arrival in Cairo, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, in a major national address, for the first time revealed to Saudi citizens the impending arrival of American and British troops to help defend the desert monarchy against the thousands of Iraqi troops massed at Saudi Arabia’s border with Kuwait.

Britain announced Thursday that it is dispatching a force of warplanes, ground-to-air missiles and warplanes that will add at least 1,900 air force and navy personnel to the thousands of troops President Bush ordered to Saudi Arabia earlier this week as a multinational defense force.

“These forces from friendly powers are here temporarily,” the Saudi monarch said, calling the deployment of the multinational force “a purely defensive measure.”