Hostage Vigil at Border : Bush Gives U.S. Troops a Pep Talk

The U.S. ambassador to Jordan waited at the Iraqi border today to see if Saddam Hussein would make good on his promise to release Western women and children held in Iraq. The White House said it had no evidence that they were free to leave.

But Iraq’s ambassador to the United States today formally notified the State Department of the plan to let the group go.

Ambassador Mohamed Al-Mashat told reporters after meeting with department officials that the Americans will be allowed to leave through Jordan or Turkey but gave no timetable for their departure.

“It is not possible administratively that everybody go on the same day,” Al-Mashat said.

He said he did not know whether the Iraqi government would provide aircraft to facilitate the departures.

Al-Mashat said once the United States gives assurances “that they are not going to strike Iraq, and attack Iraq or aggress upon Iraq, then we are going to let even men out.”

President Bush today delivered a pep talk to U.S. troops broadcast over Armed Forces Radio. He said their assignment in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the gulf is “one of the toughest military missions in modern memory.”

“You stand on the front line against aggression and international lawlessness,” Bush said. “We have never sought conflict, nor do we hope to chart a course for other nations, but at the hands of injustice, in the face of aggression, ours is a once-reluctant fist now clutched resolutely.”

Many in the region apparently did not hear Bush’s address because the radio network does not have a transmitter in Saudi Arabia. The only place it could be received there is at permanent U.S. barracks on Saudi military bases.

Hussein, the Iraqi president, announced Tuesday that all women and children among the thousands of foreigners being held hostage could leave starting today.

However, no Western hostages had crossed the Jordanian border by nightfall.

Ambassador Roger Harrison traveled to the Jordanian border post of Ruweishid, 210 miles northeast of Amman, to supervise the reception of any American women and children arriving there, the embassy said.

American diplomatic officials have manned the border round-the-clock for two weeks in case any U.S. hostages were freed. Harrison’s presence suggested new arrivals were imminent.

White House spokesman Roman Popadiuk, meanwhile, refused to confirm or deny a report that the Administration had received a message from the Iraqi president, offering to pull out his invading troops from Kuwait with conditions.

But in Amman senior Arab military officials said today that Hussein is expected to declare federated self-rule for Kuwait in a bid to ease the gulf crisis and allow the United States to withdraw in partial victory.

The idea, already floated to the Soviet Union and the United States, the sources said, may figure in talks Thursday between Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz and U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in Amman.

The officials said Hussein is likely to announce the move before the end of September.