‘Time Running Out,’ Gorbachev Warns Iraqis

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, warning Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that “time is running out,” said Monday that the Kremlin will agree to tougher U.N. actions if Iraq does not withdraw from Kuwait immediately.

“If Iraq really wants a settlement in the entire region and seeks to avoid the worst, it must now openly declare it will pull out of Kuwait and show this with action, release hostages and in general stop preventing foreigners from leaving Iraq,” Gorbachev said.

“Otherwise, a U.N. Security Council resolution will be passed--a tough resolution,” he told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz in remarks reported by the official Tass news agency.

Aziz’s visit to Moscow came within days of Thursday’s Security Council meeting that will consider a new resolution on a response to the Aug. 2 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The five permanent members of the Security Council, including the Soviet Union, have agreed in principle on a January deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, it was disclosed Monday. The deadline will be subject to further negotiations before being put before the 15-member council.

In Moscow, Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature: “Our position remains based on principles, and it includes the following: Aggression is inadmissible. It should be punished, and the pre-aggression state should be restored.”

Given the timing of Gorbachev’s remarks, with a U.N. decision possible this week, his words constituted a clear warning to the Iraqi government to abandon Kuwait.

The Kremlin has supported U.N. action to restore Kuwait’s independence but has been wary of seeing a crisis so near its southern borders explode into war. At U.N. headquarters in New York, the United States has been wooing the Soviet Union and other Security Council members for support of the U.S.-worded draft resolution.

Any such measure is doomed to failure if it is not supported by the Soviet Union.

Soviet U.N. Ambassador Yuli M. Vorontsov said at the United Nations on Monday: “I think we are going to have a very serious resolution.”

President Bush attempted to persuade Gorbachev last week in Paris to join him in backing the proposed U.N. resolution. The Soviet leader turned him down.

But during his meeting with Aziz on Monday evening, Gorbachev indicated that he is losing patience with the Baghdad regime. The Soviet president told the Iraqi foreign minister to relay this message to Hussein:

“Weigh everything again and again. The fate of Iraq is in the hands of its leadership. Time is running out.”

The Kremlin chief also accused Iraq of preventing Soviet citizens from returning home.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Vitaly I. Churkin told a news conference earlier Monday that of the more than 3,000 Soviet nationals in Iraq, about 1,000 have expressed a desire to leave but have been barred from doing so.

Only 350 Soviets have been allowed to leave so far this month, he said.

“If the Iraqi side does not immediately remove all obstacles and allow our citizens to leave, this will complicate the present situation even further and force us to take a far tougher attitude,” Churkin said.

Churkin is a former assistant to Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who was giving his first briefing after succeeding Gennady I. Gerasimov as head of the ministry’s Information Department.

Evacuation of Soviet citizens from Iraq was going as scheduled until this month, according to Soviet authorities. Earlier in the crisis, Iraq threatened to prevent Soviet nationals from leaving if the Soviet Union gave military secrets to the United States.

Aziz told Gorbachev there are no obstacles keeping Soviet nationals from leaving Iraq except some misunderstandings of a “bureaucratic nature.”

In a dramatic departure from the normally strait-laced style in which it delivers news of diplomatic encounters, Tass reported that Aziz said “nothing new.”

According to Tass, Gorbachev derided Hussein’s insistence that “Kuwait is Iraqi land” and said Iraq’s demand that all disputes in the Mideast must be settled together is “not to be taken seriously.”

“An aggression has been committed,” Gorbachev told Aziz. “It must be stopped. Only then will it be possible to address other issues of Middle East settlement.”