Iraq to Bush: Let’s Talk : Same Old Rhetoric, U.S. Replies

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein urged President Bush today to seek a peaceful solution to the Persian Gulf crisis or face global disaster.

But the White House said today the United States had no interest in negotiating with Hussein while Iraq remains in Kuwait.

In an “open letter” read on Iraqi television, Hussein said Bush had not taken up initiatives and solutions offered by Baghdad to resolve the 19-day-old crisis.

He said the White House showed a lack of intelligence in dismissing his initiatives out of hand, not even seeking a formal text first.

“He (Bush) should look for peaceful solutions,” the letter said.

“If Bush was to attack, a grave disaster would take place, not only regarding the region but regarding the whole world,” the Iraqi president said.

The message was released as Iraq’s foreign minister, Tarik Aziz, told a news conference in Amman, Jordan, that Baghdad was ready for talks with Washington and denied that foreigners being held by Iraq are hostages.

Iraq’s previous peace offers--immediately rejected by Washington--included a suggestion that the Persian Gulf crisis be linked to an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land and a Syrian pull-out from Lebanon.

Hussein’s latest message was described by presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater as “much of the same rhetoric that we’ve heard before. Same old litany from Iraq.”

“At this point, we see very little to talk about when all we get are negative responses,” Fitzwater told reporters accompanying Bush to a political fund-raising golf tournament at Falmouth, Me.

Fitzwater also said there would be no announcement today on the pending call-up of U.S. military reserves. White House officials said earlier in the day the executive order for Bush to sign was making its way through the bureaucracy from the Pentagon.

In other developments in the gulf crisis today:

* Iraq has moved into Kuwait 36 Scud missiles capable of hitting targets deep inside Saudi Arabia with chemical warheads, the publisher of the authoritative Jane’s Defense Weekly, Paul Beaver, told Reuters. “We know that he did move missiles to Kuwait,” Brig. Gen. Turki Bin Nasser, a Saudi base commander, told Pentagon pool reporters at a press conference in Saudi Arabia.

Asked if the missiles increased the threat of a chemical weapons attack, he said, “I think he (Hussein) has the ability and he has the means of delivering chemical weapons and we are well trained for it.”

* An Iraqi freighter unloaded in Yemen, apparently the first vessel to dodge a blockade of the Persian Gulf by the U.S. and British navies after the United Nations imposed sanctions to punish Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

* The nine-nation Western European Union decided to step up and coordinate military operations in the Persian Gulf and urged the U.N. Security Council to take added measures to enforce sanctions against Iraq. The union effectively gave the go-ahead to three nations--Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy--to commit naval forces to the tense region.

* President Francois Mitterrand said France would send ground forces to the United Arab Emirates in response to the crisis.