‘The Man Must Leave Kuwait,’ Bush Insists : Reaction: The President and Baker say that hostage release is a sign that U.S. strategy is working.

President Bush said Thursday that Iraq’s announcement that it will free the hostages it is holding is welcome news but that he will not relax the military and economic pressure on Saddam Hussein until the Iraqi president pulls his troops out of Kuwait and the Kuwaiti government is restored.

“The release of all hostages would be a very good thing, but the problem is the aggression against Kuwait. The man must leave Kuwait without reservation, without condition,” Bush said. “The whole world is united in this.”

The Iraqi announcement caught White House officials by surprise. Bush was given initial reports about it aboard Air Force One as he flew from Buenos Aires to Chile, his fourth stop on a five-nation, weeklong tour of South America, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III said a short time later in Washington that the U.S. government had received official word of the plan.

Speaking at a news conference in midafternoon in Santiago, Bush said: “I hope that it shows that the strategy is working and Saddam understands that his hostage policy has incurred the condemnation of the whole world. We’ve got to continue to keep the pressure on.

“No single hostage should have been taken in the first place,” the President added.

Baker struck a similar note during testimony on Capitol Hill.

“This is a welcome and significant development . . . but it does not lessen, nor should it lessen, our determination that Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait must be reversed through the full implementation of all the U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Baker told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Appearing before the committee as part of Bush Administration efforts to quell criticism of the President’s policies in the Persian Gulf, Baker said an actual hostage release should be taken as a “sign that our strategy of diplomatic and military pressure is working.”

“It seems to me that it is no coincidence that this statement comes just one week after the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of force” to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, Baker said.

The Iraqi announcement on the hostages came against a backdrop of growing pressure on Hussein from the international coalition against him, as well as a diplomatic effort that Baker has called “the last best chance” for Hussein to avert war: the coming visit to Washington by Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz and a follow-up visit to Baghdad by Baker.

Bush took pains to portray the coming meetings, which he suggested last week, as opportunities to “be sure, by going this last, extra step for peace, that the Iraqis know from me, and Aziz knows from me, and Saddam Hussein knows directly from the secretary of state, what is at stake in this matter.”

The meetings should not be seen, he said, as either secret negotiations or opportunities to offer Hussein incentives to withdraw.

“There are no secret negotiations, direct or indirect, with Iraq over this question. None. And there will be none--secret negotiations of that nature,” Bush said.

There will not, he said, “be some secret agenda going on in one room and something for public consumption in another.”

Like other Hussein retreats from previous positions, Thursday’s decision on the hostages appeared intended to ease the international pressure on him--in this case by taking away a major, but not primary, issue of contention between Iraq and the forces arrayed against him.

Word of Hussein’s proposal came from the official Iraqi News Agency, which reported that he instructed the Iraqi Parliament to free all hostages because they are no longer needed to deter an attack by the U.S.-led multinational force.

He was reported to have said in a letter to his National Assembly that recent diplomatic moves prompted him to “respond to positive changes.”

“I urge you to take a just decision to end the travel ban imposed on foreigners and restore to all of them the freedom to travel, apologizing to those who may have been harmed, and seeking forgiveness from God, the Almighty,” Hussein told Parliament.

White House officials traveling with Bush said there is no reason to think that the rubber-stamp Parliament will not follow Hussein’s wishes.

Later, spokesman Fitzwater said the White House has “a lot of questions” about how the hostage release would be worked out. But, he added, “we’ve had a growing number of assurances that it’s real.”

He said it is unclear whether the hostages will leave Iraq on chartered aircraft or on regularly scheduled flights. He also said the U.S. government has contingency plans that involve use of military aircraft and hospitals, if needed.

“We will do everything humanly possible to see they get out as quickly as possible,” he said.

The White House spokesman also said that the release of the hostages will not figure into the upcoming U.S.-Iraqi meetings--unless “it’s a prelude to (an) unconditional withdrawal” from Kuwait.

Fitzwater added that the situation in the Persian Gulf has become a “complicating factor” in planning for a U.S.-Soviet summit conference in Moscow in January and has contributed to slowing down planning for it.

Among the thousands of Westerners held in Iraq and Kuwait are more than 700 Americans, 88 of whom have been held at strategic sites to deter attack on Iraqi forces.

Over the four months of the crisis, Hussein has released hostages, usually in small groups. The Administration has seen these steps as unsuccessful attempts to placate others in the anti-Iraq coalition and perhaps to split the united front.

To the suggestion that the Iraqi president’s previous retreats were akin to cutting off a slice of salami, piece by piece, one White House official--puzzled by it but nonetheless seeming optimistic--characterized Thursday’s development as “a whole chunk.”

The Administration’s campaign for firmness against Iraq continued Thursday with Baker’s testimony in Congress that Baghdad’s decision on the hostages should not soften international opposition to the invasion of Kuwait and may have resulted from the threat of force.

The theme was quickly taken up by Republican lawmakers eager to counter criticism by Democrats that Bush is needlessly pushing the United States toward war.

Hussein “may have taken seriously the firm resolve of the Bush Administration,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Persuading the Iraqi leader to pull out of Kuwait is “most likely to come if Saddam understands that we are rock-solid,” Lugar said. “Our credibility is the path to peace.”

While welcoming the hostage announcement, several Democrats cautioned that releasing the foreigners may not represent a concession so much as a shrewd tactical maneuver by Hussein to weaken the resolve of the international coalition opposing him.

“Only time will tell, but right now it looks more like (a move) in a chess game,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.).

“It could be part of another effort to weaken our resolve at home and drive a wedge into the international consensus,” he said.

Baker, voicing a skepticism shared by the lawmakers, said he wants “to see it actually happen” before commenting further on the hostage release.

However, he strongly denied reports circulating at the United Nations that the Administration has decided to support a resolution calling for an immediate international peace conference on the Middle East--or that the U.S. position on that question might be linked to the hostage release.

Baker reiterated the position adopted when his predecessor, George P. Shultz, was secretary of state that “properly structured,” an international peace conference “might be useful” at an “appropriate” time.

But he added that there could be no link between an Arab-Israeli peace settlement and the confrontation with Iraq, saying, “This is certainly not an appropriate time for an international conference.”

Gerstenzang reported from Santiago and Ross from Washington.