No Retreat on Kuwait : U.S. Not Interested in Partial Solution to Crisis, Baker Says

Secretary of State James A. Baker III today rejected hints from Iraq that it might withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for concessions, and Kuwait’s exiled prime minister said his government would not give Saddam Hussein “even a single inch” of territory in any settlement.

“We are unwilling to engage in a search for partial solutions,” Baker said at a State Department news conference in which he again demanded the reversal of Iraq’s invasion of its oil-rich Persian Gulf neighbor.

Yielding to the Iraqi president’s apparent interest in a partial settlement of the crisis would permit him “to claim benefits” from Iraq’s “rape of Kuwait,” Baker said.

And President Bush, challenged today in Iowa by three young men protesting U.S. involvement in the gulf, said that “the fight isn’t about oil, the fight is about naked aggression.”

Bush was campaigning for Gov. Terry E. Branstad at the Des Moines Civic Center when one protester stood up and shouted: “Mr. President, bring our troops home from Saudi Arabia!”

A second young man then demanded: “Stop the buildup, Mr. President!” A third shouted: “No war for oil!”

The three also chanted “No blood for oil” before being removed by a uniformed police officer.

Unconfirmed reports in Moscow and the Jordanian capital of Amman have said that Hussein is willing to withdraw from the rest of Kuwait if he can keep an oil field and two strategic islands in the northern Persian Gulf.

In Saudi Arabia, Kuwaiti Crown Prince Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah told reporters: “The people of Kuwait have already taken an unequivocal resolution not to make any concessions on Kuwaiti sovereignty, and these people will not surrender even a single inch of land.”

Saad made the comments on the day after a conference of 1,200 Kuwaitis in Saudi Arabia, which included members of the exiled Royal Family and pro-democracy opposition groups.

Also today, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev dispatched an envoy to the West to seek a peaceful end to the gulf crisis.

Gorbachev sent an envoy on a peace mission to Rome, Paris and Washington. A Soviet spokesman said Gorbachev aide Yevgeny Primakov, recently back from talks with Hussein in Baghdad, will meet with Bush.

Meanwhile, a Japanese plan to deploy soldiers overseas for the first time since World War II was introduced in Parliament today. The chief Cabinet secretary, Misoji Sakamoto, said passage of the plan would help Japan “fulfill its responsibilities to maintain peace in the international society.”

Iraq said today that its position never to yield on Kuwait remained firm.

“We will not give it up even if we fight for it 1,000 years,” said Al Thawra, the newspaper of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party. “This is our final decision, a decision that all Iraq defends and guards by 6 million fighters.”

Jordan’s King Hussein, who has worked to try to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, said in remarks published today that war may be imminent. Hussein told the New York Times that the outbreak of war would partly be the fault of Bush and other Western leaders, who failed to respond promptly to Iraq’s early indications it was willing to withdraw.

The king said Saddam Hussein agreed in August to withdraw from Kuwait if the Arab League did not criticize him, but the group’s condemnation ended the deal.

The Jordanian monarch revealed that on Aug. 2, the day of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Bush gave him 48 hours to secure a commitment from the Iraqi president to withdraw his troops.

The king quoted Saddam Hussein as saying shortly after the invasion that “within a week we’ll be gone,” but also that the Iraqis “would not respond positively to threats or intimidation.”