Iraq Moves to Avert Possible U.S. Reprisals

The Iraqi government moved swiftly Thursday to avert possible U.S. military reprisals, with several concessions interpreted here as clear signals that President Saddam Hussein would go to almost any length to avoid clashing with the multinational force facing him in the Saudi Arabian desert.

The steps included a decision to give in to to U.S. demands for consular access to an American citizen wounded by Iraqi gunfire in Kuwait and an invitation to President Bush to address the Iraqi nation on television, which Bush quickly accepted.

The Iraqi concession on the wounded American came a day after the U.S. State Department, in a terse announcement, said the unidentified man had been shot by an Iraqi soldier. The department demanded that U.S. consular officials be permitted to see him, and analysts here read into this an implied threat of military retaliation.

According to Western diplomats in Baghdad, the Iraqi moves were a clear departure from the generally hard line that Hussein has followed since his Aug. 2 invasion of neighboring Kuwait. In addressing the United States and the other nations in the multinational force that assembled to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi army, Hussein’s rhetoric has been fiery and confrontational. On Wednesday, he called for Muslims to join a jihad--holy war--against the Americans.

Iraqi confirmation of the shooting incident, the diplomats said, was a rare display of candor for the Iraqi leadership, which routinely refuses to comment on virtually everything that puts their country in a negative light.

Iraq’s top official spokesman, Naji Hadithi, said at a hastily arranged press conference Thursday:

“I have to confirm here that the American citizen was inadvertently wounded in his hand, and the wound is a very slight wound. He is recovering now in the province of Kuwait (Iraq now refers to occupied Kuwait as one of its provinces). Consular access will be given to the American Embassy in Baghdad.”

Asked about the circumstances of the shooting--which occurred in an area where Iraqi soldiers have been rounding up foreigners to add to a human shield at strategic locations--Hadithi replied, “I don’t have that information, but he was wounded by accident.”

According to the State Department version of the incident, based on accounts from Kuwait, the shooting occurred as Iraqi soldiers seeking to round up Americans from an apartment building in Kuwait knocked on the door of one unit, then entered as an American in the room was climbing out the window in an attempt to evade capture.

The Iraqis shot at the man, hitting his forearm, and, according to an unofficial description provided by a knowledgeable source--causing him to fall and severely injure his leg. The man was taken to a hospital in Kuwait, while other Americans caught in the roundup were moved to the Mansour Melia Hotel in Baghdad.

The decision to let U.S. officials see the wounded man marks the first time since the occupation of Kuwait that Iraq has allowed face-to-face contact between U.S. diplomats and any of the estimated 2,000 U.S. nationals still in Kuwait.

The Iraqi regime informed American officials that the wounded man is expected to be discharged from a hospital shortly but will remain in Iraqi custody. According to the State Department, U.S. officials will be allowed to visit him when he is out of the hospital.

Hadithi made it clear that the officials who visit the wounded man must be from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Even though nine American diplomats are holding out at the embassy in Kuwait, the Iraqis insist that because Kuwait is no longer an independent country, there are no longer any embassies there.

“The American Embassy is in the capital, in Baghdad,” Hadithi said.

President Hussein has ordered all the embassies in Kuwait to shut down. More than a dozen, including the American facility, are still open. They are surrounded by troops, and the occupants are said to be desperately short of food and water.

Hadithi recalled that President Bush had complained about not getting equal time after American television networks aired long, unedited interviews with Hussein. Bush, he said, “expressed the desire to have a chance to address the Iraqi people, and we have said yes, OK, we are ready to send an Iraqi TV crew to Washington to interview Mr. Bush.”

He emphasized that “we will not censor it.”

A Western diplomat in Baghdad said the change in tone on Baghdad’s part indicates that the Iraqis “seem to be looking for some negotiating room.”

“The last thing Hussein can afford right now is all-out war with the West,” the diplomat said. “If that happens, he knows he’s finished. The shooting of this American clearly was a mistake by panicked or trigger-happy troops. It appears the president was genuinely afraid of a military response from President Bush, and so they’re doing some fast damage control.”

Despite those concessions, there was a hard edge to one Iraqi announcement Thursday. Iraq’s justice minister, Akram Abdul-Kader, ordered public prosecutors and police to revive a 1987 law that “a foreigner violating the entry and exit procedures . . . will be sentenced to life or temporary imprisonment, and all cash in his possession will be confiscated.”

In an interview with the official Iraqi News Agency, the justice minister also repeated an order given Aug. 24 that anyone caught harboring a foreigner would face charges of espionage, punishable by death.

Meanwhile, Hussein was using the military stalemate as an opportunity to continue his diplomatic search for holes in the international embargo that is strangling Iraq.

He sent Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, fresh from talks in Moscow, an erstwhile ally, to Iran, an erstwhile enemy. Deputy Foreign Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan was in China. Hussein himself spent much of the day in talks with King Hussein of neighboring Jordan.

A Western diplomat said of this activity: “They’ve been working on the (U.N.) Security Council members, to see if they’re still firm. Iraq has to chip away at the edges and see how well-built the structure is. If this fails, they’ll have to think of something else. What they need is time.”

Foreign women and children were still being moved out of the region, by overland routes from Kuwait to Baghdad, and by air from Baghdad.

Thursday afternoon, a Canadian government charter flight carrying 136 Canadian passengers, 10 Irish and 12 Americans left Baghdad for Amman, followed by a British charter filled with many of the 306 British women and children who had come to Baghdad by bus Tuesday night from Kuwait.

Western diplomats said that most of the 1,400 American women and children estimated to be in Kuwait were still in hiding, too frightened to put any faith in the offer of safe passage.

But the diplomats said they are certain that the Americans will begin coming out today.