Baker-Aziz Crisis Talks Fail : Both Sides Charge Inflexibility; Israel Threatened : Gulf confrontation: U.S. and Iraq meet for six hours in attempt to avert war. Both say they are ready for conflict any time after Tuesday’s U.N. deadline.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz failed Wednesday in their attempt to avert war in the Persian Gulf.

For more than six hours, the two men talked in a hotel meeting room here, trying to find a diplomatic solution to the gulf crisis. But they ended their discussions without having narrowed their differences on a single issue.

In extraordinary back-to-back press conferences following their talks, Baker and Aziz outlined their own positions in detail, and each accused the other of inflexibility. Both said they are ready for war any time after the United Nations deadline for Iraq to withdraw from occupied Kuwait expires next Tuesday.

“The Iraqi leadership must have no doubt that the 28 nations which have deployed forces to the gulf in support of the United Nations have both the power and the will to evict Iraq from Kuwait,” Baker said.

“If it should choose to continue its brutal occupation of Kuwait, Iraq will be choosing a military confrontation which it cannot win and which will have devastating consequences for Iraq.”

For his part, Aziz said: “If they decide to attack Iraq, we will not be surprised. . . . Iraq will defend itself in a very bold manner.”

And Aziz said that if war breaks out, Iraq will immediately broaden the conflict by attacking Israel, a strategy that might persuade some Arab countries to reassess their support of the United States.

If there is war, will Iraq attack Israel? Aziz was asked. “Yes, absolutely, yes,” he responded.

Baker did not close all doors to the possibility of a settlement, suggesting that U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar “could use his good offices” in the time remaining before the U.N. deadline expires.

And Perez de Cuellar announced late Wednesday that he will leave for Baghdad today in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to head off war.

The Baker-Aziz talks, held in an austere room barely large enough for a wooden table and the chairs of the nine delegates on each side, lasted for six hours and 27 minutes--far longer than originally anticipated. Afterward, each man complimented the other for the high diplomatic tone of the meeting.

“We weren’t pounding the table and shouting at each other,” Baker said. “It was a very reasoned and, I think, responsible discussion by two diplomats. . . .”

As the talks droned on past Baker’s tentatively scheduled departure for Turkey, rumors of a possible breakthrough swept from Geneva to Wall Street.

But, as Baker and Aziz made clear in their press conferences, the meeting ran long because each man had a lot to say and each listened politely to the other. Negotiations never started, and Aziz said he never thought it necessary to check with Baghdad, although Baker telephoned President Bush twice, once during the lunch break and once after the talks ended.

Asked if differences were narrowed on any issue, Baker made clear that they were not.

“The tone was as good as you could expect under the circumstances . . . but I did not detect flexibility on the part of Iraq,” he said. As for the United States, Baker said his purpose was to “communicate, not negotiate.”

Asked why the talks broke up, Baker said: “After over six hours of discussion, we both had pretty well made the points we had come to make, and that was that. I don’t think anything was left around.”

Aziz said, “I didn’t find anything new in what Mr. Baker said in our meetings.”

Baker said no more high-level U.S.-Iraqi meetings are contemplated. He said peace is still possible, but only if Iraq changes its mind and agrees to end its occupation of Kuwait.

One of Baker’s assignments in Geneva was to hand Aziz a personal letter from Bush to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But although Aziz read the letter--which the White House described as tough but polite--he formally refused to accept it.

His reason, Aziz said, was because the letter’s language was not courteous enough. He made it clear that Hussein wants Bush to treat him as an equal.

“When a head of state writes to another head of state and he really intends to make peace with that head of state . . . he should use polite language,” Aziz said. “The language of that letter was contrary to the language between heads of state.”

He said the substance of the letter was not much different from Baker’s comments during the meeting. But he said Baker’s tone was diplomatic, while the letter was not.

As the meeting was breaking up, a member of the Iraqi delegation remarked to waiting reporters, “I never knew Americans could be so arrogant.”

In preparation for a possible war, Baker said the United States will withdraw Joseph C. Wilson IV, acting chief of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and his three remaining aides from the Iraqi capital on Saturday. He said Aziz assured him that the diplomats would be allowed to leave without incident.

At the same time, Baker said, Iraq will be ordered to reduce the size of its embassy staff in Washington but will not be required to close the facility.

By bringing home Wilson, the point man in U.S. diplomatic contacts with Iraq, the Bush Administration is seeking to guarantee that the embassy staff will not be taken hostage or hurt in U.S. bombing raids if war comes. But the action also effectively severs substantive contacts between the two governments.

The Saturday date for closing the embassy in Iraq is symbolic because that is the day Hussein wanted Baker to visit him in Baghdad. The United States rejected the date as too close to the U.N. deadline of next Tuesday. When Iraq refused to offer an earlier date, the United States withdrew the offer to send Baker to Baghdad, choosing instead to deliver its message Wednesday in Geneva.

It was clear from the comments of both Baker and Aziz that the Iraqi official sought to change the focus of the discussion from Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion and occupation of Kuwait to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The United States has long rejected the notion--pushed by Iraq and endorsed by some of America’s allies--of linking the Persian Gulf crisis to the Palestinian problem.

Aziz said he repeated the offer, originally made by Hussein on Aug. 12, to settle the gulf crisis in the context of an overall Middle East peace settlement that would also require Israel to relinquish the West Bank and Gaza Strip territories it has held since the Arab-Israel War in 1967. Baker rejected the idea.

Baker said that for the United States to support Iraq’s call for a comprehensive Middle East peace conference in exchange for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait would amount to “rewarding aggression.” Besides, he said, Aziz did not really promise that Iraq would pull out of Kuwait even if there was agreement to try to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

“I did say to him that I don’t believe that Iraq invaded Kuwait to help the Palestinians,” Baker said.

Aziz devoted much of his opening statement at his press conference to an assertion that Iraq was ready to settle all Middle East disputes at once.

But when asked if Iraq would leave Kuwait if the United States agreed to support an international conference on the Middle East, Aziz said: “I did not put it that way. I told the secretary that if you are ready to accept the principle of equality, you will find us very cooperative.”

He complained that U.N. resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories have been on the books for 17 years, while the resolutions demanding Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait date only from last August. The strongest of those resolutions, passed Nov. 29, authorizes the use of military force to oust Iraq after Jan. 15.

For its part, the Israeli government has noted that the West Bank and Gaza resolutions also call on Arab states to recognize Israel’s right to exist within internationally recognized borders in exchange for an end to the Israeli occupation. Most Arab states have not complied with their side of the bargain either.

Baker said he told Aziz that Iraq was guilty of a series of miscalculations throughout the crisis.

“The Iraqi government miscalculated the international response to the invasion of Kuwait. . . . It miscalculated the response . . . to the barbaric policy of holding thousands of foreign hostages. . . . And it miscalculated that it could divide the international community and gain something thereby from its aggression,” he said. “So let us hope that Iraq does not miscalculate again.”

Perhaps the biggest mistake by the Iraqi leadership, Baker said, is its apparent belief that the United States lacks the stomach for a war in the Middle East.

“I said (to Aziz), ‘Don’t miscalculate the resolve of the American people, who are slow to anger, but believe strongly in principle and believe we should not reward aggression.’ ”

Aziz made it clear that he resents Baker’s implication that Iraq was acting out of ignorance.

“We do know everything,” Aziz said. “We know what the deployment of your forces in the area means. We know what the resolutions you imposed on the Security Council mean. We know all of the facts.”

Although Baker had been scheduled to fly to Turkey on Wednesday night for meetings today with President Turgut Ozal and other officials, he remained in Geneva overnight. Officials said the Ankara airport was closed due to fog by the time the Aziz meeting had ended. Baker plans to go to Saudi Arabia today, rescheduling the Turkey stop for Sunday before his return to Washington.

STANDOFF IN GENEVA ‘Regrettably . . . I heard nothing that suggested to me any Iraqi flexibility whatsoever on complying with the United Nations Security Council resolutions.’

‘So let us hope that Iraq does not miscalculate again. . . . If it should choose . . . to continue its brutal occupation of Kuwait, Iraq will be choosing a military confrontation which it cannot win and which will have devastating consequences for Iraq.’

‘The path of peace remains open, and that path is laid out very clearly in 12 United Nations Security Council resolutions. . . . Let us all hope that (Iraq’s) leadership will have the wisdom to choose . . . peace.’

‘We have not made miscalculations. We are very well aware of the situation. We have been very well aware of the situation from the very beginning.’

‘What is at stake in our region is peace, security and stability. . . . If you are

ready to bring about peace to the region--comprehensive, lasting, just peace to the whole region of the Middle East--we are ready to cooperate.’

‘If they decide to attack Iraq, we will not be surprised. We have our experience in war. And I told him that if the American Administration decides to attack Iraq militarily, Iraq will defend itself in a very bold manner.’