Europe Scraps Talks With Iraq : Gulf crisis: Foreign ministers cancel plan for Baghdad’s Tarik Aziz to come to Rome, saying he must first meet with Bush.

European Community foreign ministers today ruled out a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz on the Persian Gulf crisis unless he first sits down with President Bush.

But they seemed to leave open the possibility of a change of policy if Washington and Baghdad stay deadlocked as a Jan. 15 deadline nears for U.S.-led military action in the gulf.

The ministers scrapped a meeting between Aziz and the Community’s Italian presidency in Rome Thursday because Aziz did not go to Washington on Monday to meet with Bush and discuss Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

(In Washington, President Bush said his efforts to arrange direct talks with Iraq had stalled but vowed he was more determined than ever to enforce a U.N. mandate that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. “I guess I’m about where I was a couple of weeks ago when I made that proposal,” Bush told reporters when asked to quantify whether he was now closer to a war in the Persian Gulf.)

The Aziz visit to Washington was called off because of a wrangle over the dates of a return visit to Baghdad by Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Washington rejected Saddam’s proposal for a meeting on Jan. 12, saying it was too close to the U.N. deadline and would not give Iraq enough time to withdraw from Kuwait.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a Turkish television interview released today in Ankara, said, “There is no need for us to go to Washington if Bush is to repeat to us the U.N. Security Council resolutions.” The resolutions call for the complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait.

Diplomats named Britain and the Netherlands as among countries strongly opposing talks with Aziz and said several ministers argued against any change in policy at today’s meeting. They quoted Belgian Foreign Minister Mark Eyskens as saying any change would be premature.

The diplomats said the ministers left unclear whether their decision might be reviewed if efforts failed to resolve the Persian Gulf conflict peacefully.