Bush Eases Up on Timing for a Full Pullout

With only three days left for Iraq to leave Kuwait or face a U.S.-led military offensive, President Bush acknowledged Saturday that Saddam Hussein has too little time to carry out a complete withdrawal but said the Iraqi leader still could avert war by starting “a large-scale removal of troops.”

While there was no sign from Baghdad that Hussein would step back from the confrontation that has brought the Persian Gulf to the brink of war, Bush’s statement was the first sign that he would settle for something less than removal of all of Iraq’s troops by the midnight Tuesday deadline imposed by the United Nations.

Although both houses of Congress had just given Bush the authorization he had sought to use military force against Iraq if it ignores the deadline, Bush said war is not inevitable. Nor, he said, had he made up his mind to go to war. But the President emphasized: “The 15th is a very real deadline.”

His message was directed not only at Hussein, but at foreign leaders who might consider pursuing their own peacekeeping missions to Baghdad beyond the deadline.

Bush interrupted a weekend at Camp David, Md., to return to the White House to discuss the congressional authorization and to meet briefly with senior foreign policy and national security advisers. As Bush thanked Congress for its action, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, and other senior officials looked on.

Shortly afterward, the White House made public the text of the letter that Bush had sought unsuccessfully to have delivered to Hussein. Secretary of State James A. Baker III carried the letter to his meeting Wednesday in Geneva with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, but the Iraqi official complained that it did not address Hussein with the proper respect, and refused to accept it.

Warning Hussein that “should war come, it will be a far greater tragedy for you and your country,” Bush said in the letter that “the United States will not tolerate the use of chemical or biological weapons or the destruction of Kuwait’s oil fields and installations.”

Iraq is believed to have used chemical weapons in the past--against Iran and against its own Kurdish minority--and there have been concerns that it would attempt to set Kuwait’s valuable oil fields ablaze in a war.

In addition, Bush, who said in the news conference that he had “some concern” about terrorism, told Hussein in the letter that he would be held “directly responsible for terrorist actions” directed against any of the 28 nations in the coalition aligned against him.

“The American people would demand the strongest possible response,” Bush wrote, describing his letter as one written “not to threaten, but to inform.”

“You and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of this sort,” he wrote.

On Friday, the State Department said the U.S. government has evidence that “terrorists supported by Iraq are planning to mount attacks in most regions in the world,” in the event of war in the Persian Gulf.

The 66-year-old President, looking pale and tired as he walked to the Oval Office from his Marine One helicopter, said he watched some of the congressional debate on television.

“What the Congress did today was indeed historic,” he said.

“This clear expression of the Congress represents the last best chance for peace,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “This sends the clearest message to Iraq that it cannot scorn the Jan. 15 deadline.”

“We did not plan for war, nor do we seek war. But if conflict is thrust upon us, we are ready and we are determined,” he said. “Unfortunately, Iraq has thus far turned a deaf ear to the voices of peace and reason. Let there be no mistake: Peace is everyone’s goal. Peace is in everyone’s prayers. But it is for Iraq to decide.”

With more than 1 million troops massed in the gulf and the U.N. deadline rapidly approaching, any hope of averting war appeared to rest with a last-minute mission by U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who arrived in Baghdad Saturday for talks with Hussein.

But, Bush said, with Congress clearly behind him and the international coalition holding strong, this is “absolutely not” the time to give Hussein what one questioner called “an avenue out of this mess.”

Meanwhile, the remaining U.S. diplomats in Baghdad were flown out of Iraq on Saturday, and the State Department ordered Iraq to reduce its embassy staff in Washington to only four persons from a total of more than 20. It said the move was intended “to reduce Iraq’s capability to orchestrate terrorism in the event of gulf hostilities.”

The department informed Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat that the additional diplomatic personnel and their dependents must leave the United States by midnight Tuesday.

Mashat and the three other remaining diplomats must stay within a 25-mile radius of the embassy, the department said in a statement. It said the four are being allowed to remain in Washington “to function as a channel of communication” with Baghdad.

Asked at his news conference if he foresaw anything that could avert war, Bush replied: “An instant commencement of a large-scale removal of troops with no condition, no concession, and just heading out, could well be the best and only way to avert war, even though it would be at this date, I would say, almost impossible to comply fully with the United Nations resolutions” setting the Jan. 15 deadline.

While acknowledging that withdrawing the estimated 250,000 Iraqi troops from Kuwait by midnight Tuesday would be “almost impossible,” Bush said:

“If he started now to do that which he should have done weeks ago, clearly that would make a difference.”

And, even as he stuck to his insistence that the Jan. 15 deadline would hold, Bush expressed an openness to diplomacy in the remaining hours.

Times staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this report.