U.N. Chief Sees Little Hope of Averting War

Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, discouraged and disappointed, returned to the United Nations on Monday and said his talks with Saddam Hussein were “unfortunately unsuccessful.”

Asked if he had lost hope of averting war in the Persian Gulf, he replied: “In some ways, yes.”

“I have not been offered anything from the Iraqi authorities which I can consider a step towards peace,” the secretary general said after returning to New York from his weekend journey to Baghdad and his fruitless talks with the Iraqi president.

“You have an expression in English--’You need two to tango’--and I wanted very much to dance, but I didn’t find a nice lady to dance with,” the 70-year-old diplomat said.

Hours later, France began a last-ditch peace initiative. But it appeared to collapse under the weight of objections from the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Early today, after briefing the Security Council on his mission, Perez de Cuellar said the council will continue up to the deadline to try to find a peaceful solution. He said the council “unanimously desired” a peaceful outcome and will try all day “to avoid the worst.” Pushing back the deadline, he said, is “out of the question.”

It was understood that France will seek a presidential statement by council members today, but sources said it could run into the same opposition as before.

French diplomats called for Iraq to begin a “rapid and massive withdrawal from Kuwait.” In return, the United Nations would set up a largely Arab international peacekeeping force for Kuwait, and the Security Council would convene, at an appropriate but unspecified time, an international peace conference to deal with the problems of the Middle East.

The French plan proposed as an interim step that international observers be sent to Kuwait to verify the pullout of Iraqi troops. A guarantee of nonaggression could then be provided to Baghdad as part of the package.

The State Department expressed its immediate negative reaction to the French plan.

“A plan like that wouldn’t have our support. It’s not time to start backsliding from the U.N. resolutions,” a U.S. spokesman said.

Because of its mention of a Mideast peace conference, the French proposal bore the stigma of “linkage,” the notion that an Iraqi pullout would somehow be tied to the larger questions of the Middle East. Washington has adamantly opposed such linkage.

“We don’t think it appropriate to be talking about an international conference at this time,” a senior State Department official said.

The Soviet U.N. ambassador, Yuli Vorontsov, also downgraded the French plan. “Maybe it’s a good proposal at the wrong time,” he said.

Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, Abdul Amir Anbari, took a more positive view.

“We are saying, let us talk. Let us negotiate. Let us stop threatening each other,” Anbari said. “We will negotiate anything.”

The Iraqi envoy said that France might be better suited than other members of the Security Council to work out constructive solutions to the Persian Gulf crisis.

But the flurry of last-minute diplomatic initiatives was overshadowed by looming war clouds.

The United Nations, founded with the hope of saving succeeding generations of mankind from the scourge of war, prepared to face its worst nightmare as Perez de Cuellar came home with almost no hope.

With the failure of U.S.-Iraqi talks in Geneva last week, the eyes of the world had been on Perez de Cuellar’s carefully crafted mission. But as he stepped off the plane from Paris--having conferred earlier Monday with French President Francois Mitterrand--it was clear that time was short and little had been accomplished by his trip to Baghdad.

The secretary general was asked if there was any hope for peace.

“As far as I am concerned, I have done what I have to do,” Perez de Cuellar said. “I don’t know whether others will do something, but it appears to me that it is perhaps a little late for embarking on any other efforts.”

The veteran diplomat said he had relayed the discouraging news to the prime minister of Britain and to U.S. and Soviet officials.

“I am a little exhausted,” he said.

Perez de Cuellar stressed that he did not travel to Baghdad as President Bush’s messenger. “I was a messenger of the international community as a whole who wanted peace, a just peace,” he said.

“Did Saddam Hussein mention withdrawal at any time?” a reporter asked.

“No, he didn’t express any desire to withdraw from Kuwait,” the secretary general said.

“I can tell you that, unfortunately, I have not much in my hands,” Perez de Cuellar said.

Late in the evening, Perez de Cuellar briefed members of the Security Council during a closed door session. To a large measure, his remarks merely amplified what he had said at the airport.

The secretary general told council members that he asked Saddam Hussein if he would pull his troops from Kuwait. Perez de Cuellar said that Iraq’s president was very polite, but the answer was no.

Sources said the import of the secretary general’s remarks to the council was that he was up against a brick wall.

In another last-minute peace bid, Yemen--Iraq’s closest ally on the Security Council--sent a high-level delegation to Baghdad to discuss its own six-point plan to stave off war.

Like the French proposal, it was quickly rejected at the United Nations by U.S. diplomats.

The Yemeni plan called for sending an international peacekeeping force to Kuwait after Iraq’s withdrawal. At the same time, it proposed the pullout of troops of the anti-Iraqi multinational alliance. As part of the package, Yemen proposed that economic sanctions against Iraq be lifted.

Earlier Monday, the foreign ministers of the 12 European Community nations, in their third emergency meeting in 10 days on the gulf standoff, decided that any further attempts to resolve the crisis diplomatically would be fruitless.

“The European Community and its member states regret to say that the conditions for a new European initiative are not now met,” they said in a declaration following their meeting.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz had rebuffed the Europeans’ Jan. 4 invitation to meet with a delegation of three EC foreign ministers.

Foreign Minister Jacques Poos of Luxembourg, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Community, met with Perez de Cuellar in Paris Monday morning, before the foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.

“I found the secretary general very pessimistic,” Poos said. “He told me he was bringing nothing back with him from Baghdad. He said Iraq had offered nothing.”

Iraqi President Hussein showed no interest even in the Europeans’ suggestion that an international conference be held after the gulf crisis to debate the broader Mideast issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian question, Poos said Perez de Cuellar told him.

“Our extended hand was refused,” Poos said.

“What rendered the secretary general so pessimistic,” Poos said, “was that he had no real dialogue with the Iraqi authorities. (They) merely reiterated their intention not to leave Kuwait and that Kuwait was the 19th province of Iraq.”

Some of Perez de Cuellar’s advisers were guardedly optimistic when he began his trip to Baghdad on Thursday. But as word of his unsuccessful discussions became public, pessimism spread.

Dozens of reporters filled the corridors at U.N. headquarters seeking to interview ambassadors representing the Security Council’s 15 members. But in public and in private, the diplomats were glum.

“The countdown has begun,” said one Western envoy--and many other diplomats agreed.

Times staff writer Joel Havemann in Brussels contributed to this report.