‘Despondent’ Iraqi Envoy Leaves U.S.

Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat, still expressing hope for a last-minute peace initiative and warning that war would bring “a catastrophe for everybody” and “only ashes” for the United States, left Washington on Tuesday night, less than four hours before the deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

Iraqi officials, Mashat said in his final interview before leaving the embassy, continue to hold out the possibility that French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas would go to Baghdad in a final effort to avoid conflict. He said his government was in close touch with French authorities and that he and Abdul Amir Anbari, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, discussed the matter in a telephone conversation Tuesday afternoon. But in Paris, French officials indicated that such a trip was extremely unlikely.

Mashat warned that American interests “will be haunted by Arabs and Muslims for decades to come” if war breaks out.

Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Mashat left Washington with mixed emotions. Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, Mashat, 59, a Muslim and an American-educated diplomat, has been a passionate--and at times truculent--defender of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

With his departure, the embassy that for months was at center of the diplomatic firestorm fell into eerie silence.

He left Washington’s Dulles International Airport at 8:30 EST Tuesday with his second wife, an Iraqi citizen, on a flight bound for London. They left their 16-year-old son here to continue attending a local high school.

“We didn’t want to disrupt his schooling,” Mashat said.

The ambassador, who left behind a skeleton force of four persons to operate the embassy, had hoped to delay his departure until today so he could catch a more direct flight to the Middle East. But once the Iraqi government ordered him to return to Baghdad, the State Department refused to give him a day’s extension for his departure.

The State Department, declaring that it wants to “reduce Iraq’s capability to orchestrate terrorism in the event of gulf hostilities,” last Saturday ordered that the Iraqi Embassy staff be cut from about 25 to four. Mashat had planned to be one of the four until the Iraqi government ordered him to return.

The ambassador, who was previously married to an American, has a 31-year-old son and a 28-year-old daughter living in Miami; both are American citizens. He earned a BA and MA in criminology at UC Berkeley and received a Ph.D in sociology at the University of Maryland in 1960.

Mashat’s last day at the embassy was marked by a visit by former Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, a long-time peace activist, and by a protest by about 30 Young Republicans chanting “Free Kuwait” and “Saddam don’t wait, get out of Kuwait.” They carried signs that said, “Stop the Butcher of Baghdad,” “Saddam Is Going to Get Bush-Whacked” and “Saddam, Prepare to Meet Allah.”

Questioned by reporters as he emerged from the embassy following a session with Mashat, Clark said he was acting on his own “to see if there was anything that could be done” to avoid war.

Asked whose fault it was that the United States and Iraq appeared to be headed for war, he said, “It’s obviously the President of the United States. He won’t talk, he has refused to talk. . . . There has been no discussion. There has been no dialogue. We don’t know what’s possible.”

Jason Miko, executive director of the College Republican National Committee, which sponsored the protest, said most college students support Bush and his policies, but “we’re unhappy about the image college students have right now, as objecting to Bush and not supporting the troops out there.”

During his final interview at the embassy, Mashat, described by a friend as “clearly despondent in recent days,” rambled on at length about U.S. intentions, declaring at one point, “God knows we don’t want this war; the Americans are starting the war, not us. It was Americans who made deadlines. Americans who were planning to attack Iraq in the first place. We consider it will be mass murder because there’s nothing Iraq has done to the United States, Iraq has not touched U.S. interests.”

Mashat complained that, even though Iraq has been willing to negotiate from the beginning, President Bush has insisted there would be no negotiations unless the Iraqis first withdrew unconditionally from Kuwait.

“We want peace with justice,” Mashat insisted, “and we will never accept any humiliation or surrender. It’s an Arab problem and you should let Arabs solve it.”

Declaring there “will be no winner in this war,” he said “it will be a catastrophe for everybody. The only winner may be Israel.” The United States “will get only ashes,” he said, chuckling nervously.

” . . . You should consider all the animosity that will be created by U.S. aggression among all the millions of Arabs and the billion Muslims in the world,” he continued. “The blood that will be shed, we put that responsibility on the Americans because they have blocked the Arab solution.”

Times staff writer Jennifer Toth contributed to this article.