U.N. Chief Says Little After Meeting Hussein : Gulf crisis: Many view the session as the last chance to talk peace. Iraq rejects Syrian appeal to leave Kuwait.

An evasive Javier Perez de Cuellar, the U.N. secretary general, left Baghdad late Sunday saying only that he has gleaned a better understanding of Iraq’s position on the Persian Gulf crisis from a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Perez de Cuellar ended a two-day visit to Iraq that many observers had viewed as a last chance to talk peace. Tuesday is the U.N. deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Afterwards, a U.S.-led multinational force is authorized by the Security Council to use force to oust Iraq.

Talking to Iraqi reporters overnight, Hussein said, “The time to surrender is over. Kuwait is not only the 19th province, but a symbol of the Arab nation.”

And Reuters reported that the 250-member Iraqi National Assembly had unanimously backed Hussein’s “no concessions” stand on Kuwait.

Besides meeting with Hussein, Perez de Cuellar met for three hours with Iraq’s Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz.

“I now have a very good idea of their positions and had an opportunity for sharing with them some ideas of mine, all in the sense of finding a peaceful solution,” he said before boarding his Learjet for Paris. Sources in the French capital said he will meet early today with President Francois Mitterrand before flying on to New York.

Perez de Cuellar said that before making a fuller public statement, he was bound by U.N. rules to report to the Security Council.

He declined to predict whether war would break out in the Persian Gulf. “It is a question, if you believe in God, only God knows. If you don’t believe in God, who knows?” he told reporters gathered at the airport.

“I’ve always said I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic,” he said. Then he changed his mind and added: “I’m always hopeful or I couldn’t be secretary general.”

President Bush, speaking to reporters at the White House on Sunday afternoon, said he had not yet spoken with Perez de Cuellar, and a White House spokesman said that the President probably would not do so until this morning because of the secretary general’s travel schedule.

The U.N. leader’s meeting with Hussein began at 6:15 p.m. It was not clear what Perez de Cuellar did the rest of the day; Iraqi television reported that he had met with Aziz on Saturday night.

Aziz, who accompanied Perez de Cuellar to the airport, declined to comment on the visit, saying that “the show was for the secretary general.”

Reports that Perez de Cuellar carried a five-point peace plan to Baghdad that would include an Iraqi withdrawal in return for the pullout of foreign troops from Saudi Arabia could not be verified.

In response to such reports, government spokesman Latif Jasim insisted that Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait made foreign interference unthinkable: “There is no need for such plans. Kuwait is the 19th province of Iraq. There can be no compromise on that.”

There did not appear to be much anticipation of other purported new initiatives. Diplomats at the embassy of the Soviet Union said they were unaware of new proposals said to be in the works from Moscow. “We have no instructions, and as far as we know, there are no new contacts,” a Soviet envoy here said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi rhetoric kept to its defiant pitch, and physical evidence on the streets of the capital pointed to war. The country’s National Assembly, which is usually convened to give the color of popular will to decisions made by Hussein, is to meet today.

Diplomats conjectured that the assembly might either pass resolutions to echo the ones approved in the U.S. Congress, authorizing war or, short of that, condemning the expected international military assault.

In response to a written appeal from Syria’s President Hafez Assad for Iraq to quit Kuwait, Hussein replied only that the “19th province,” as Kuwait is routinely called here, was to become a “battlefield.”

He urged Assad to abandon his alliance with the United States and Iraq’s Arab adversaries and join Iraq. “It will be an event recorded in history if President Hafez Assad joins the group of the faithful,” Hussein wrote in a letter read on state television.

The Qadisiya newspaper, published by the Defense Ministry, claimed that Iraq possesses a “surprise weapon” that when unleashed promises “cruel defeat on the masses of American aggressors.”

At a railway station in central Baghdad, lines of flatbed trucks carried sand-colored, camouflaged tanks for loading onto the rails for transport south. Hundreds of soldiers gathered at bus stations for transport to Kuwait, while others returned home for short leaves.

A militia organized by the government practiced taking up posts at main intersections. Many of the portly reservists in the Popular Army carried Soviet-style AK-47 rifles.

A pair of visiting foreigners whose countries are aligned with Iraq lobbied for more time to work out a compromise.

“I think there is a big chance to avoid war,” said Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

He said that Perez de Cuellar should be given time and a mandate to work out a deal with Hussein. “More dialogue, more dialogue, more negotiations, more talks with all partners,” Arafat implored. “The door is still open. The windows are open to achieve peace.”

He echoed the Iraqi position that Tuesday’s deadline for a pullout from Kuwait is invalid. “Jan. 15 is only a date,” Arafat said, noting that it is the birthday of the late Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Abdul Nasser.

“It is not the end of the world.”

Arafat, wearing fatigues and his traditional desert headdress, pledged that unrest would break out all over the Middle East if Iraq is attacked. “Any attack against any Arab country will rebound directly on the whole Arab nation,” he asserted.

The PLO favors Iraq’s stand that any solution to the dispute over Kuwait must include an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip.

Daniel Ortega, former president of Nicaragua and one of a number of former leaders to come to Baghdad for talks, said it was up to the United States to head off war.

“An atmosphere for peace must be created without threats,” he said.

Both Ortega and Arafat held talks with Hussein before Perez de Cuellar got his chance to see the Iraqi leader, and government television gave their visits much more prominence than that of the U.N. chief. Hussein also found time to chat with a Japanese politician and American peace activists before seeing the U.N. secretary general.

Some of the handful of foreign diplomats remaining in Baghdad tallied up Iraq’s recent diplomatic moves and concluded that Baghdad is not yet convinced that the global alliance arrayed against it will go to war.

Diplomats guessed that Hussein is probably pleased with the course of his diplomacy, which in the words of an Asian diplomat, “has had foreign governments begging him to leave a house he has taken over and robbed.”

The goal, some envoys insisted, is for Iraq to avoid war until spring, when a new harvest of wheat will be available to boost sagging food supplies and when Muslim holidays begin that might inhibit Arab adversaries from supporting war.

“If Hussein can prolong this thing--keep talking--he might feel he can escape,” said a diplomat from a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country.

The last allied embassy to remain open in Baghdad, that of Turkey, shut down Sunday. It was a surprise; just the day before, officials there announced that the mission would remain open. “This is a precaution,” one diplomat explained.

Members of Japan’s embassy are expected to leave today. The Soviet Embassy stayed open, but officials were packing equipment, shredding documents and dispersing to houses throughout the city because they felt that in case of bombing, the embassy building would be unsafe.