NEWS ANALYSIS : King Hussein Pursues Own Solution to the Peace Puzzle : Jordan: Officials say the main issue is to resolve the occupation of Kuwait. Restoring the royal family to power is not necessarily on the king’s agenda.

In a diplomatic shuttle mission that appears to subtly undercut Washington’s goals in the Persian Gulf crisis, Jordan’s King Hussein is trying to line up Arab backing for a plan to persuade Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait but not to necessarily restore the ousted royal family that ruled the oil sheikdom before the invasion.

Hussein, whose stand on the invasion has drawn criticism from the Bush Administration, was in Tunis, Tunisia, on Monday on the second stop in a whirlwind tour of North African countries. He began Sunday in Libya and is expected to travel on to Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania.

Already, he has met with envoys from Sudan and Yemen in order to promote his plan to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to pull his army out of Kuwait. Later in the week, the king is expected to travel to Great Britain and France.

Jordanian officials and observers say that in the monarch’s view, the main issue that needs to be resolved is simply the occupation of Kuwait, and that he gives less importance to bringing back the deposed Sabah family. His government opposed Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait but is sympathetic to Iraqi claims to territory and access to the sea.

In a television interview this week, Crown Prince Hassan, the king’s brother, outlined the government’s policy. “Clearly, we have to conceive (of) the withdrawal of troops, and at the same time it is quite clear that Iraq has longstanding historical claims with issues like oil and waterways,” he said.

Although Hassan argued that these claims can be taken up within the “context of U.N. resolutions,” the resolutions themselves do not seem to support that position. The United Nations has called not only for Iraq’s immediate withdrawal from Kuwait but also for the restoration of the authority of the “legitimate government” there.

Nonetheless, Jordanian officials prefer to take a step-by-step approach with a view toward reducing tensions. Persuading Saddam Hussein to recognize that the invasion was a mistake, they believe, is the key first step.

In addition, the Jordanians insist that the sending of U.S. troops to the Arabian Peninsula also increases the danger of war.

“The total exclusion of diplomatic middle ground is clearly not the policy of the U.S.,” Hassan said in a backhanded critique. “But in a way, we think that the time has come for us to review with other Arab leaders, and possibly many other states, the possibility of the United States . . . stopping the escalation at a certain point and give peace a chance.”

Tahero Masri, a member of Parliament and head of that body’s foreign relations committee, added, “The king wants to ask Saddam to accept the principle of withdrawal. He wants to build a united position to propose to Iraq.”

In order to get his mission under way, King Hussein has mostly chosen countries that stopped short of condemning the Iraqi invasion. At an Arab League meeting at the beginning of the crisis, Jordan, Sudan, Algeria, Yemen and Mauritania all abstained from a resolution criticizing the invasion. Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which also has sent emissaries to speak with King Hussein, voted against the resolution.

“The king believes it is important to start a process of de-escalation and to do it representing a bloc,” Masri said. The status of the Sabah family can be left for later negotiations, he added.

Privately, however, other officials say that the rule of the Sabah family must be sacrificed if Iraq is to be persuaded to withdraw.

But leaving the Sabahs out would put this solution at odds with the policy of President Bush, who has given equal weight to withdrawal and the return of the royal family.

American officials are known to welcome King Hussein’s diplomacy as long as it adheres to Bush Administration and U.N. policy. But with the king, it is difficult to tell just where he stands. Since the beginning of the crisis almost a month ago, he has carried on an evasive and sometimes contradictory policy.

Passively, he says Jordan accepts all United Nations resolutions directed against Iraq, including one that calls for a full trade embargo.

But in action, Jordan has moved slowly in taking steps to implement the sanctions. It emptied out grain silos at the port of Aqaba and shipped the wheat to Iraq even as the United States was beginning to enforce the embargo offshore. Trucks carrying a variety of goods, especially building material, are still crossing the Jordanian border into the neighboring state.

Initially, Jordan declined to criticize Iraq for the invasion--and only when Baghdad formally annexed Kuwait did King Hussein begin to draw away from his bellicose neighbor.

The reluctance to take sides against Iraq was explained by Jordanian officials as necessary to keep lines of communications open. Moreover, there was intense political pressure inside Jordan to back Saddam Hussein; Jordanian public opinion has been solidly behind the Iraqi leader.

Jordan also had come to view Iraq as a potential protector against Israel to the west. Right-wing Israeli politicians had been trumpeting a solution to the country’s Palestinian conflict that was based on overthrowing King Hussein and setting up a Palestinian state in Jordan.

While the king is barnstorming Arab and Western capitals, major international diplomacy is scheduled to take place on his doorstep. U.N. General Secretary Javier Perez de Cuellar is scheduled to arrive in Amman on Thursday to meet with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, who will travel from Baghdad.

Jordanian observers cautioned against expecting dramatic results from the meeting. Perez de Cuellar, they point out, is bound by the resolutions passed by the organization that he heads.

Perez de Cuellar worked out a cease-fire agreement three years ago between Iraq and Iran that effectively brought to a close their eight-year war. However, his relations with Aziz were considered rocky at the time, and it is not clear how much his intervention will sway the Iraqis.

In any event, as part of its ongoing diplomatic offensive, Iraq announced that it will welcome Perez de Cuellar. Why he does not travel to Baghdad is a mystery. Jordanians speculated that Perez de Cuellar wants to avoid giving any appearance of a tilt toward Saddam Hussein and preferred to meet his envoy in Jordan as a kind of halfway gesture.

Jordanians also felt the meeting would at least give some pause to the building atmosphere of war that has enveloped the Middle East since the invasion took place.