Iraq Accepts U.S. Talks but Pushes a Wider Agenda : Gulf crisis: Baghdad seeks to tie any dialogue to ‘outstanding issues in the Arab region,’ including Palestine. The U.S. has rejected such a linkage.

The Iraqi government Saturday accepted President Bush’s proposal for talks on the Persian Gulf crisis, but it pushed its own agenda of a comprehensive settlement of Middle East issues.

“Our endeavor will be, as it has always been, to conduct a profoundly serious dialogue,” President Saddam Hussein’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council announced in a statement released by the official Iraqi News Agency.

It insisted that “Palestine and other occupied Arab lands” will be part of any dialogue.

The acceptance message, broadcast by Baghdad Radio, accused Bush of seeking “ pro forma meetings . . . as a pretext” for international and American endorsement of his goal, which it said is “aggression against Iraq.”

Nevertheless, the Iraqi regime announced, “We accept the idea of the invitation and the meeting.”

In Washington, White House spokeswoman Laura Melillo said Iraq has not yet formally responded to the U.S. invitation for talks and that therefore it is not yet known what, if any, conditions the Baghdad regime might try to attach to its acceptance.

Melillo said the U.S. invitation was officially presented to Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz by the top American diplomat in Iraq, Charge d’Affaires Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Bush, at a Washington news conference Friday, made the surprise offer to send Secretary of State James A. Baker III to Baghdad and to receive Aziz in the United States in search of a diplomatic breakthrough in the explosive crisis that enters its fifth month today.

But the President made it clear that he is not proposing negotiations or signaling any willingness to compromise the stand he has taken since Hussein’s forces invaded and occupied Kuwait on Aug. 2.

The President said he is prepared “to go the extra mile for peace,” but he stressed: “I am not suggesting discussions that will result in anything less than Iraq’s complete withdrawal from Kuwait, restoration of Kuwait’s legitimate government and freedom for all hostages.” Moreover, he said steps must also be taken to protect the Persian Gulf region from any future Iraqi aggression.

It was early Friday evening Baghdad time when Bush disclosed his invitation, but no word of the offer appeared in Saturday morning’s newspapers in the Iraqi capital. The government’s response Saturday was the first mention of the sudden development to appear in the Iraqi media.

Press reports from the Iraqi capital said Hussein called his 10-member council of ruling-party and military leaders into emergency session Friday night after reports of the Bush invitation reached Baghdad.

The Baghdad Radio broadcast of Iraqi acceptance came as tens of thousands of students marched through the center of the city in a Martyrs Day demonstration organized by the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party. According to news reports from the Iraqi capital, the demonstrators, mourning Iraqi dead in the 1980-88 war with Iran, chanted “Death to Bush!” and burned an effigy of the American leader.

The acceptance statement itself was harshly anti-American in rhetoric, declaring, “ . . . The enemy of God, the arrogant President of the United States George Bush has consistently opposed dialogue, expressing his hatred of Arabs and Muslims and all those who believe in God and the world’s human values.”

But Hussein’s regime agreed to accept the offer, which has been applauded widely in the United States and abroad. Amman’s English-language Jordan Times, for instance, which has been critical of American policy throughout the crisis, termed it a “courageous and historic decision.”

Earlier, Iraq’s ambassador to France, Abdul Razzack Hamshimi, called Bush’s offer “an important step toward peace.”

Even though Bush himself professed no high hopes for a diplomatic settlement before Jan. 15, the date when Thursday’s pivotal U.N. Security Council resolution authorizes military action against Iraq, Hussein would have found it politically difficult to reject a proposal for dialogue. It has been his chief demand since the major world powers elected to strangle Iraq with economic and military power in the days following the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

In accepting, the Iraqi leadership called the invitation “an unclear idea whose motives are unclear too.” It said Baghdad will seek clarification on whether the talks will be limited to American and Iraqi participants.

“If the American side sees it as necessary, Iraq will invite on its part the presence of representatives from nations and parties linked to the outstanding issues in the Arab region,” the Baghdad statement said. “ . . . Palestine and other occupied Arab lands will be at the forefront of the issues dealt with in any dialogue.”

But linkage between the invasion of Kuwait and other, longstanding Middle East issues has been flatly opposed by Washington since Hussein first raised the formula on Aug. 12, 10 days after Iraq seized Kuwait. Any such linkage was flatly rejected again Saturday by American officials in Washington.

The Bush Administration has insisted all along that the only solution to the Persian Gulf crisis is Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Thus, Iraq’s new effort to tie the crisis to other Middle East problems may simply be a diplomatic smoke screen.

If the talks take place--Bush suggested that Aziz go to Washington in the week of Dec. 10--they will still have to bridge the chasm of differences on how to resolve the crisis and the institutional antipathy between the two governments, and do it by Jan. 15. Neither side appeared optimistic.