Aziz ‘Smart, Smooth, Clever,’ but Some Doubt His Sway With Hussein : Diplomacy: Iraq’s foreign minister may at best be a message carrier.

Tarik Aziz, the courtly foreign minister of Iraq, will have the ear of Secretary of State James A. Baker III--and, no doubt, will get an earful from him as well--during their pivotal meeting today. But diplomats in Baghdad and Washington wonder aloud whether Aziz has the ear of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s maximum leader.

The question is important, because the Bush Adminstration insists that the goal of the meeting in Geneva is to make clear to Hussein the risks of war, and Baker is relying on Aziz to carry that message.

From the Iraqi point of view, the talks are supposed to do more: press for some sort of settlement based on Hussein’s Aug. 12 declaration that the conflict in Kuwait must be resolved in the context of wider Middle East problems. In the unlikely event that this agenda is taken up--Baker says he comes not to negotiate but only to state the U.S. position--the issue of whether Aziz is authorized to negotiate with authority is critical.

In the minds of some expert observers, Aziz is at best a message carrier and has no major influence on Hussein.

“He is not in the inner circle. He is just the urbane face of the regime,” said a Western diplomat with long experience in Baghdad.

“It’s not clear whether the Foreign Ministry, including Aziz, is fully involved in the decision-making. We sometimes think not,” commented another Western diplomat.

Added a State Department official in Washington: “Everyone thinks that he’s very smart, very smooth and very clever.

“Nevertheless,” the official added, “it’s not totally clear whether Aziz was in on the planning of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait or has simply been swept up by events.”

Smooth, polished, sophisticated--these are the adjectives often applied to Aziz, whose English is as flawless as his beloved Cuban cigars are strong.

He is a rarity in Iraqi politics: a Christian who has risen high in a government dominated by secular-oriented Sunni Muslims and, in recent years, representatives of Iraq’s restive Shiite Muslim majority.

Iraqi public life is often a matter of survival, and the silver-haired Aziz, 54, has survived not only the violent purges of Hussein’s rise and hold on power but also a 1980 assassination attempt by Iranian-backed Shiite rebels.

He was born Mikhail Johanna in Mosul, northern Iraq, into a family of Chaldean Christians, a denomination founded by St. Thomas the Apostle. The name change was meant to make him sound Muslim, although everyone in Iraq seems aware of his origins.

Aziz, whose family moved to Baghdad when he was a boy, has known Saddam Hussein since the 1950s, when Aziz was an activist in the Arab Baath Socialist Party, the formal base of Hussein’s rule. An English literature student in college, Aziz was a co-conspirator with Hussein in efforts to overthrow the British-installed monarchy that ruled Iraq.

The two men were close: Aziz named the third of his sons Saddam.

During his career under Hussein’s patronage, Aziz has edited the Baath party newspaper, served as information minister and sat on the ruling Revolutionary Command Council. He was named foreign minister in 1983, in the midst of Iraq’s disastrous eight-year war with Iran.

Despite the pedigree, Aziz is said not to hold the full confidence of Hussein, who has come to rely more and more on in-laws, cousins and other relatives for trusted counsel.

As information minister, Aziz developed powerful skills as a propagandist, and he is often called “the human face of the regime.” In conversation, he speaks in measured tones but is capable of a cutting wit.

In recent interviews, he has laughed off suggestions that Iraq will pull out of Kuwait by the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline and lambasted the United States for arrogance in its dealings with Iraq. He suggested that Israel first withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and told a reporter that Iraq’s problems stem from the symbolic “little Israeli” he claims to find undermining Iraqi diplomatic efforts everywhere.

Doubts that Aziz deeply influences Hussein’s policies surfaced prominently in Amman, Jordan, in August, when Aziz met with Javier Perez de Cuellar, the U.N. secretary general. As the talks warmed up, Perez de Cuellar sensed a breakthrough, and talks scheduled for one night were extended to the next day. But then Aziz phoned Hussein, and suddenly the glimmer of progress disappeared, Jordanian officials say.

“Saddam simply shut down any aspiration Aziz might have had to negotiate,” said a senior Jordanian official. “Perez de Cuellar was infuriated.”

Otherwise during the crisis, Aziz has been busy trying to find foreign adherents to support Iraq’s point of view. He traveled to Moscow in a frustrated effort to persuade the Soviet Union to oppose the U.N. resolutions calling for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. He was supposed to attend the U.N. General Assembly session in New York, but he stayed away when Washington refused to permit an Iraqi airliner to land on U.S. territory.