Soviets’ Last-Ditch Try to Avert War Fell Short

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in the dead of night, scrambled to win U.S. permission to give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein one last chance to back down and head off war in the Persian Gulf.

But the bombs began falling on Baghdad before Washington rang back to give the Kremlin the go-ahead, Soviet officials said.

Washington gave Moscow about one hour’s warning of imminent hostilities--which broke out at 2:30 a.m. today Moscow time--in a telephone call to the home of the new foreign minister, Alexander A. Bessmertnykh.

The call from Secretary of State James A. Baker III sent senior ministers rushing into a crisis meeting with Gorbachev.

“We naturally pay tribute to the fact that we were informed by the American side beforehand,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Belonogov said of the warning that preceded U.S.-led air strikes aimed at forcing Iraq out of Kuwait.

“But it would have been better and easier for us if it had come a little bit earlier. It is clear we needed an extra hour,” Belonogov told a news conference, in the only faint criticism of Washington’s handling of the high-level contacts.

In a later attempt to stop hostilities, Gorbachev had a message to Hussein delivered in Baghdad today urging the Iraqi leader to announce he was pulling out of Kuwait, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Describing earlier Soviet diplomatic efforts overnight, Belonogov and other officials projected a picture of desperate Kremlin efforts to avert war at the last second.

A Kremlin spokesman said the Soviet ambassador in Baghdad met in a fortified bunker with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz just before war broke out and delivered a final appeal from Gorbachev for Iraq to quit Kuwait.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Vitaly Churkin said the message was a “firm and unambiguous” call for Iraq to declare its readiness to leave Kuwait, Tass news agency reported.

The Soviets said their final message did not tip off Iraq that an attack was imminent.

“We had no moral right to disclose to anyone the information we received in a confidential manner from the American side,” Belonogov said.