EC Calls Off Meeting With Iraqi Diplomat : Dialogue: ‘We are really shocked by this attitude of Europe,’ an official in Baghdad angrily replies.

The European Community’s foreign ministers Tuesday called off a scheduled meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, even though U.S. officials had switched signals and said the meeting would be all right with them.

The foreign ministers decided that European nations should not negotiate separately with Iraq until Baghdad and Washington first hold their own talks. To do otherwise, they felt, would risk sending the wrong signal to Baghdad.

“We must maintain the pressure on Iraq,” said Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, the community’s executive body.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi government reacted with anger. “We are really shocked by this attitude of Europe,” said a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official.

Aziz had been scheduled to go to Rome on Dec. 27 to meet with Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the EC’s Council of Ministers.

Although the EC issued no formal statement announcing its decision, individual foreign ministers said they wanted to avoid a meeting of their own until U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III had held such a session with the Iraqi official.

Before traveling to Rome, Aziz had been scheduled to meet with President Bush in Washington on Monday. But Iraq called off that session because the United States rejected Iraq’s offer of Jan. 12 for a return visit by Baker to Iraq.

U.S. officials said Jan. 12 is too close to the Jan. 15 deadline imposed by the U.N. Security Council for Iraq to pull its troops out of Kuwait or face military action by a U.S.-led multinational force.

Just two days ago in Rome, the heads of state of the 12 European Community nations adopted a resolution condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and demanding its withdrawal by the Jan. 15 deadline.

And Tuesday’s decision to scrap the Aziz visit reflected the Europeans’ reluctance to get ahead of the United States in Persian Gulf policy. At the same time, however, the foreign ministers left open the possibility of such a session as Jan. 15 approaches.

“I would not take it as a definitive fact that the U.S.-Iraqi talks will not take place,” said German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. “We want to do everything possible that they should take place, and we want to put the EC position to the Iraqi leadership.”

U.S. officials had previously reacted coolly to the prospect of a separate meeting between European officials and Aziz. But Baker, who was also in Brussels on Monday for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers that preceded the EC foreign ministers’ session, said he now endorses the EC’s prospective meeting with the Iraqi official.

In Baghdad, with less than a month left for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait or face war, Iraqi officials were grim-faced over the news from Europe.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman asked, “Should peace talks be canceled because of petty disputes over dates?” He then declared, “We want peace but this is too much.”

With proposals for talks in Europe as well as in the United States now in limbo, Iraq has come up empty on its drive to break out of diplomatic isolation. Efforts to open a dialogue with adversary Saudi Arabia also came to nothing.

The only smooth spot in Iraqi diplomacy appeared when Baghdad apparently settled a dispute Tuesday with the Soviet Union over the departure of Soviet technicians from Iraq. Iraq has withheld permission for the departure on the grounds that Moscow owed it money for canceled contracts.

A visiting Soviet delegation indicated a willingness to pay, and Iraqi Industry Minister Hussein Kamal Hassan responded that the Soviets could leave “no matter if they have completed their contracts or not.”

The decision effects about 2,300 Soviets believed to be working on oil and electric power installations. It is not clear whether Soviet military advisers are leaving.

Havemann reported from Brussels and Williams from Baghdad.