U.N. Chief to Suggest Neutral Force to Keep Peace in Gulf

United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar will this weekend offer to send a neutral U.N. force into Kuwait if Iraq agrees to pull out and will also promise that U.S. troops will not be involved, Italy said today.

Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis said in Rome that a peacekeeping force for Kuwait from which the United States and the other members of the anti-Iraqi alliance would be excluded will be the U.N. chief’s main offer to Baghdad.

“The United Nations is ready to organize a force that would enter Kuwait if Iraq withdrew and it will not include any of Iraq’s enemies, such as the Americans, Saudis or Egyptians. That is what Perez will propose,” he said.

Officials at the United Nations said the organization has already worked out contingency plans to have U.N. peacekeepers monitor the simultaneous withdrawal of the Iraqis from Kuwait and the U.S.-led multinational forces from Saudi Arabia.

With only five days left before the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline for Iraq to withdraw or face a military attack, Perez de Cuellar’s trip to Baghdad was widely seen as the best of several last-ditch diplomatic efforts to avoid war.

Perez de Cuellar, who leaves tonight, said today that he still hopes war can be averted.

“I hope that there is a serious chance for peace, and that is why I am going,” he said.

However, he said the chances for peace “are very difficult to say.”

In Paris, Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement suggested today that the United States could bring about Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait through the “very small gesture” of endorsing an international conference on the Middle East.

France has been calling for such a conference since 1983. The Bush Administration lately has not flatly rejected the idea but refuses to link it to the Persian Gulf crisis.