U.N. Chief to Pay Hussein 11th-Hour Visit

Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, declaring it his “moral duty,” said Wednesday that he will leave for Baghdad today in a last-ditch effort to avert war between the United States and Iraq.

Perez de Cuellar’s announcement came only hours after bleak talks between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraq’s Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz in Geneva.

When it was clear that the Baker-Aziz talks had ended in deadlock, the secretary general conferred by telephone with President Bush and in person with ambassadors from Kuwait, Iraq, the United States, India and China.

“As secretary general of the United Nations, my only strength is a moral strength,” Perez de Cuellar said in announcing his delicate, 11th-hour mission. He also cited what he called “a political support of the international community” for his mission.

His mission was apparently in response to international urgings. Late Wednesday, Canadian Foreign Minister Joe Clark traveled to New York with a letter from the Ottawa government urging the secretary general to go to Baghdad, and other nations were believed to have urged him to do so as well.

Perez de Cuellar will leave New York tonight and stop briefly in Geneva before arriving in Baghdad on Saturday. He said he would stay several days, meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and do everything he can “to avoid the worst.” But he gave no specifics as to his mediating strategy.

President Bush’s response to the secretary general’s plan was measured. “If he would undertake such a mission, we would have no objection,” the President said in Washington. “This is not Iraq against the United States. This is Iraq against the rest of the world.”

And Baker, on four occasions during his news conference in Geneva, also indicated support of the secretary general’s mission.

Perez de Cuellar saw Bush at Camp David, Md., last weekend, during which the two discussed the Persian Gulf standoff resulting from Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion and occupation of Kuwait. The secretary general said then that he might undertake his own mission if talks between Baker and Aziz failed. The Geneva talks are most likely the last high-level U.S.-Iraqi contacts before Tuesday’s U.N. deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait or face military force.

“It is a very difficult role for the secretary general to play,” said Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, Abdul Amir Anbari, after meeting Wednesday with Perez de Cuellar. “However, he is the secretary general of the United Nations. He is man of peace. He feels he should try to make his contribution. He feels he should try his luck.”

When the Security Council passed its historic Nov. 29 “use-of-force” resolution, the secretary general expected to be called into negotiations. But the next day, Bush proposed that Iraq and the United States exchange visits to each other’s capitals in an effort to settle the crisis, and the United Nations was sidelined.

The diplomatic road for Perez de Cuellar’s journey was paved during several days of meetings at U.N. headquarters with the representative of Iraq and ambassadors from the U.S.-led military coalition aligned against Saddam Hussein.

“Our representative in New York met with Mr. Perez de Cuellar and informed him he would be welcome in Baghdad if he wishes to come,” Foreign Minister Aziz said Wednesday.