Iraq ‘Ready to Talk’ but Still Links Kuwait, Israel

A group of Iraqi diplomats began returning to their overseas posts today after Saddam Hussein told them that he was “ready for a serious and constructive dialogue” to avert war in the Persian Gulf, Iraqi officials said.

But Iraq denied that it was forming a new peace initiative, and Hussein reiterated that any diplomatic settlement would have to link an Iraqi pullout from Kuwait with an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Kuwait’s foreign minister today said it is too late for peace initiatives in the gulf. His comments followed new signs of war readiness Wednesday, with Iraq test-firing another missile and the United States urging Americans to leave countries where pro-Iraqi sentiment is high.

“The whole world has given enough time for a peaceful settlement of the gulf crisis,” the Kuwaiti official, Sheik Sabah Ahmed Sabah, told a news conference in Beijing. He maintained that only military force would dislodge Iraq from Kuwait.

Iraq denied reports in recent days that Hussein was preparing a diplomatic initiative ahead of the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait.

Hussein on Wednesday met with 20 diplomats who had been recalled to Baghdad ahead of the deadline, diplomats said on condition of anonymity. The returning ambassadors included those to the United States and the United Nations.

“We are ready for a serious and constructive dialogue based on mutual respect and the rejection of the course of hegemony and arrogance which the American Administration tries to impose on us,” the state Iraq News Agency quoted Hussein as telling the diplomats before they left.

But Hussein told the envoys that his Jan. 12 initiative, which links the Arab-Israeli dispute to the Kuwait crisis, should be the basis for any settlement, the diplomats said.