Ready to Fight to Free Kuwait, Mitterrand Says : Allies: He asserts France ‘cannot be missing from the battlefield,’ but troops would not attack in Iraq.

France, which has been portrayed in recent weeks as the reluctant warrior among the Western nations allied against Iraq, is ready to fight to liberate Kuwait if diplomatic efforts fail by the Jan. 15 deadline, President Francois Mitterrand said Wednesday.

In his strongest commitment yet to a military resolution of the Persian Gulf conflict, Mitterrand announced in a Paris press conference that France is “ready to fulfill its duty” in the gulf region.

“We cannot be missing from the battlefield on which are deployed the defenders of international law,” he announced at the Elysee Palace, shortly before talks between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz concluded fruitlessly here in Geneva.

But the French president said the use of France’s 10,000 military personnel in the gulf, including three regiments of the desert combat-tested Foreign Legion, would be limited to the the occupied territory of Kuwait and not extend into Iraq itself.

“The mission is to fulfill the mandate of the United Nations,” he said, “It does not mean launching some kind of war of destruction against Iraq. It means the liberation of Kuwait.”

Mitterrand also said that France will continue diplomatic efforts to try to resolve the conflict peacefully before the Tuesday deadline set by the U.N. Security Council. In recent weeks, France’s independent diplomatic forays, including its seeming willingness to link Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait with the convocation of an international conference to discuss the Palestinian issue and other Middle East concerns, has worried the United States and other governments allied against Iraq.

At a European Community foreign ministers meeting Friday, France unveiled a seven-point peace plan that implicitly linked an Iraqi withdrawal to a proposed international conference. The United States, Britain and the Netherlands all strongly criticized the French plan, arguing that it sent mixed signals to the Iraqi regime.

Also over the weekend, a Mitterrand confidant, Michel Vauzelle, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, undertook what he described as a “personal” mission to Baghdad in a free-lance effort to broker peace. After meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for four hours, Vauzelle traveled to Tunis to meet with officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Most political observers believe the Vauzelle trip was approved ahead of time by Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. On his return, Vauzelle met with the French president and suggested that Dumas himself make a Baghdad peace trip.

Within the Western community, France was perceived as drifting from the hard-line U.S. and British positions.

Mitterrand appeared to answer many of those doubts in his Wednesday press conference, by far his clearest statement to date of French policy on military involvement in the gulf.

Among other things, Mitterrand said he would call an extraordinary session of the National Assembly on Jan. 17 to seek endorsement of the military action. “A debate will take place and there will be a vote on the matter,” he said.

To reassure French families who have members serving their obligatory national service in the military, Mitterrand said that the French gulf fighting force would be composed entirely of professional army units and volunteers.

Mitterrand also stuck to his position that announcement by Iraq of a withdrawal from Kuwait--if it were “announced, executed, programmed and controlled”--could be “considered sufficient to avoid an armed conflict.” He suggested that U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar would be a good candidate to supervise the Iraqi withdrawal.

Mitterrand’s position, which he also mentioned in a speech before the United Nations in October, differs from the expressed American position demanding a total Iraqi withdrawal by Jan. 15. But Mitterrand said that he spoke with Bush by telephone Tuesday and had the impression that Washington would go along with a phased withdrawal by the Iraqis as long as it were properly monitored.

“I don’t advocate war,” Mitterrand said at the conclusion of the press conference. “I advocate peace. I simply say that if we are obligated, France will take part in the armed conflict.”