Third-Party Efforts Now Seem Only Hope for Peace

Surveying the ashes of Wednesday’s meeting in Geneva between Secretary of State State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, President Bush dutifully insisted that there is still a chance for peace.

But hopes for a nonviolent settlement of the Persian Gulf crisis now appear to hang from a single and very slender thread: the possibility that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein may be willing to do for a third party, notably the United Nations, France or Algeria, what he will not do for George Bush--back down and withdraw from Kuwait.

The Bush Administration went out of its way to leave the door open for 11th-hour diplomacy before Tuesday’s U.N. Security Council deadline for Iraq to pull out. Both Baker and Bush publicly invited the United Nations, other coalition partners and Arab nations to try their hands at talking to Baghdad.

At the same time, the President left almost no room for compromise. The only alternative to war, he made clear, is a complete and unconditional Iraqi retreat. He totally rejected Baghdad’s demands for linkage between its invasion of Kuwait and mediation on the 43-year Arab-Israeli conflict.

“There will be no linkage,” Bush asserted. “All he (Aziz) tried to do was to obfuscate, to confuse, to make everybody think this has to do with the West Bank.”

And, Bush conceded, “I am discouraged.”

Senior Administration officials privately expressed gloomy resignation Wednesday to the possibility that a bloody war in the Persian Gulf may be unavoidable in the aftermath of the failed Geneva talks.

“We’re not going to budge, and now it appears Saddam won’t either,” said one U.S. official. “We thought he might when faced with the harsh realities.”

What seems to be left is a flurry of new initiatives by others during the final six days of the countdown to Jan. 15.

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who failed to win Iraqi concessions during talks with Hussein early in the crisis, announced that he will make a final mediation effort over the weekend. “I have decided to leave tomorrow evening for Baghdad,” he said Wednesday. Perez de Cuellar will fly to Geneva and then on to the Iraqi capital, arriving Saturday.

Even before the Baker-Aziz talks were over, French President Francois Mitterrand called a press conference to discuss a possible mediating role for France or the European Community. Paris is reportedly considering sending an envoy, probably Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, to Iraq to seek a last-ditch compromise.

After his talks with Baker, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Aziz met with Algerian Foreign Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali in Geneva.

Purely in terms of tactics, these and similar efforts by others could succeed where Baker seemed to fail by using the diplomatic equivalent of the good-cop, bad-cop ploy: As Administration officials see it, after Baker played the role of bad cop in Geneva, other mediators might be able to intervene in the role of good cop and broker a miracle.

Those are no more than tactics, however. They will work only if there is willingness to compromise.

“The only hope is that both sides can gracefully back away if a third party gets in there and, in a sense, imposes a compromise on both sides,” said Henry Shuler, an oil specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Decisions have been made, and neither side can back down to the hard-line demands of the other side. But they could have more flexibility in response to a third-party proposal,” he said.

Other Middle East analysts suggested that the Geneva talks were only the opening round in the final days of the countdown. “I don’t think today tells us very much about what happens next,” said William Quandt of the Brookings Institution, a former Carter Administration National Security Council staff member.

“We’re still in a game of chicken. And in this game of machismo, Saddam may or may not still back down. We won’t know until the last minute.

“The last to-ing and fro-ing gives him a pretext to back down in order to survive. You can write the speech: ‘I have received 28 envoys, and we have made our point about the Palestinian problem and everyone has heard us. I have assurances from our visitors that when this phase of the crisis is over, the world will move on to the other Mideast problems,’ ” Quandt said.

“If he’s thinking of doing that, he’s not going to tell us ahead of time, especially to the Americans. We may stumble into a war, but I don’t believe he has a martyr complex. My gut instinct tells me that he will retreat,” Quandt added.

But others believe that the Geneva talks signal the critical turning point in the five-month crisis--and that war now appears inevitable.

“I’m pessimistic,” said Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I do not see any prospect for resolution or any light at the end of the tunnel.”

“It may not take all-out war, but it will take a shot across the bow to get this guy to move,” agreed Geoffrey Kemp, a former staffer on the Reagan Administration’s National Security Council, who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Key members of the Bush Administration have also concluded that Hussein will not budge even at the last minute.

“He may think there’s an analogy to 1973 when (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat went to war to make peace,” said a ranking official. “He may think that’s the only way to achieve his goals since we refuse to guarantee formal linkage of the two conflicts. Or, he may believe that he can fight us to a standstill and therefore win at least a symbolic victory.

“He’s wrong, but if that’s his calculation, he’ll go to war. I think he’s already made his decision,” the official said.