Iraq Rebuffs Iranian Plan for Peace in Gulf : Diplomacy: Baghdad insists it will not compromise. Hussein, in a broadcast, says U.S. power will not prevail.

Iran’s week-old initiative to stop the Persian Gulf War foundered Sunday on continued Iraqi determination to hold on to Kuwait.

Baghdad Radio, Iraq’s army newspaper and a traveling member of President Saddam Hussein’s inner circle all insisted that the Iraqi regime will make no compromises on its claim to the conquered sheikdom and that it is awaiting a coming ground war with American-led forces.

Hussein himself was heard in a broadcast Sunday for the first time in about two weeks, and he said nothing to indicate that he would be receptive to a peace proposal from any quarter.

“Iraq is not ready to relinquish the role given to it by God,” he said in a radio address to his people that the Iraqi News Agency had advertised as a “historic speech.”

He said that Iraq would win the war and that “victory will restore to the Iraqis all the requirements for a free and honorable living that they will merit as a reward for their patience and steadfastness,” according to the news agency’s transcript of the speech.

“All of America’s financial, military and economic power is not sufficient to fight the fortress of faith in Iraq,” he said.

Asked about the speech, President Bush said in Washington: “I heard what Saddam Hussein said, and I didn’t hear him say anything about him getting out of Kuwait. . . . Of course, that’s what the whole world is wanting to hear.”

Earlier, Baghdad’s military newspaper, Al Qadissiyah, said: “The Iraqi people and army led by the unique leader Saddam Hussein will continue to wage the mother of battles to the end.”

One of Hussein’s aides, Deputy Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi, arrived in Jordan on Saturday night after delivering Hussein’s answer to the Iranian peace initiative in Tehran. He told a press conference here Sunday:

“We have explained to the Iranians that what is currently taking place is unrelated to Kuwait. The question now is a question of the American aggression, a violent and imperialist aggression, which is intended to destroy Iraq and subjugate the region. . . . The issue of Kuwait has been used as a cover for aggression.”

The Iranian proposal, which President Hashemi Rafsanjani has not disclosed in detail, met initial enthusiasm in Moscow and some other capitals, although not in Washington. Rafsanjani offered to personally mediate a political solution between Baghdad and Washington.

But Iranian reports of Hussein’s response reflected the difficult road of diplomacy in the Gulf War. Baghdad refuses to discuss Kuwait, and Washington opposes any diplomatic negotiation until the Iraqi army has begun to withdraw--or is driven--from the sheikdom it invaded in August.

According to a spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, Rafsanjani characterized Hussein’s written response to his initiative as “generic, less than expected, but not wholly disappointing.”

Andreotti and Rafsanjani discussed the Iranian proposal for two hours by telephone Sunday, the spokesman said, expressing the opinion that Rafsanjani is convinced that “even a partial withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait could bring about a cease-fire and the initiation of a political solution.” So far, however, U.S. and other allied officials have shown no interest in a partial withdrawal, and Hussein, at least publicly, is not prepared to retreat an inch.

“The decision . . . in Iraq to fight the aggressors and bury their evil designs . . . is irrevocable,” a Baghdad Radio broadcast said before Hussein made his speech Sunday.

Yet even prospective peacemakers insist the only road to a political end to the war lies in an Iraqi withdrawal.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati told reporters upon his departure for Tuesday’s conference of the Nonaligned Movement in Belgrade, Yugoslavia:

“Iran’s stance towards this issue is crystal clear. The Islamic Republic . . . will reiterate (its demand for) withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and the alien (Western) forces from the region.”

Diplomats in Tehran say, however, that Rafsanjani’s government is prepared to approve a Western presence in the Gulf for a time--less than six months--after the war ends to ensure short-term stability.

Today, a personal emissary of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, reportedly Middle East specialist Yevgeny M. Primakov, is expected to arrive in Baghdad to press Hussein to withdraw or face a Western ground offensive.

A Reuters news agency report from the Iraqi capital Sunday quoted an unidentified source there as saying the Soviet envoy “will not be carrying a plan for peace . . . only a warning of grave consequences if there is no withdrawal from Kuwait.”

Hussein’s government has tried with some success to depict itself as a victim of overwhelming and indiscriminate air power in 3 1/2 weeks of open warfare, pushing aside the question of Kuwait.

Gorbachev, for instance, declared Saturday that “the logic of military operations (and) the character of military actions threaten to exceed the mandate defined by these (U.N. Security Council) resolutions.”

In Washington, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) conceded that there is validity to Gorbachev’s statement.

“I think there’s explicit and implicit objectives,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think an implicit objective now is to destroy Iraq militarily and, if you can, destroy Saddam Hussein. That wasn’t one of the four objectives set out by President Bush, but it’s sort of taken on a life of its own. . . . So there’s a bit of truth in what Gorbachev says.”

On another program, CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State James A. Baker III insisted that there has been no change in the Soviet Union’s position of support for the allies in the Gulf. Gorbachev’s statement merely warned against exceeding the U.N. mandate but made no assertion that the United States has exceeded it, the secretary of state said.

Baker suggested that the statement was motivated by the domestic political environment in the Soviet Union.

Here in Amman, Hammadi--Hussein’s envoy and a member of Baghdad’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council--appealed for popular support against what he called “the front of disbelievers, imperialism, Zionism and colonialism . . . led by the United States.”

He said the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China--”have become one.”

“The new international order they are talking about is despotism by imperialism and a return to the old colonialism,” Hammadi said.

He demanded that Arab states “diplomatically and politically” boycott countries aligned in the American-led coalition--”not to communicate with them or receive their envoys because of the aggression which was carried out against Iraq.”

“And this is the least the Arab states could do,” he told a press conference at a luxury hotel ringed by heavy security.

“Neutrality in this battle means indifference, particularly when the battle is between right and wrong, between Islam and disbelief, between revolutionaries and reactionaries.”

He called for a “front of Islam” to pressure Arab governments supporting Operation Desert Storm to change their policies. “We believe the Arab masses are the base of the battle,” he said, reflecting the Iraqi strategy of reaching out to popular opinion among Arabs, over the heads of their governments.

In Jordan, the Iraqi appeal has reached the highest levels of government. King Hussein last week sharply attacked the American bombing of Iraq, and his Parliament has taken a strongly pro-Iraqi stance despite the government’s ostensibly neutral position.

On Sunday, King Hussein insisted that his speech was misunderstood in the United States, where it was seen as a sign that he had abandoned neutrality and tilted strongly toward Baghdad.

“I have opposed the occupation of Kuwait, and I have sought a peaceful solution of the problem from the outset,” the king said in an interview from Amman with ABC’s David Brinkley. “And I believe firmly that it (peace) was reachable within the first days of the conflict, and I believe it was reachable throughout the months that have passed. And so I am really concerned on a humanitarian level by all that this war is bringing about, and nothing else.”

Elsewhere, the Arab world remains divided over the war but has shown no sign of taking up arms to defend the Iraqis.

In Riyadh, the Saudi capital, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said Sunday that Saddam Hussein’s efforts to split the Arab supporters of the coalition have failed. “He’s been able to release a certain head of steam in some Arab countries,” Hurd told reporters, “(but) not in the ones which form a core of the Arab part of the (allied) coalition--Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

“In the others, there are opposition groups, which are opposed to the government on all kinds of grounds, which have used this as a rallying point, but not decisively. . . . (Hussein) must be sorely disappointed at the failure of this particular card which he is trying to play.”

The press conference here of Hussein’s aide Hammadi, a rarity for an Iraqi official, was illustrative in questions answered and avoided. He would not, for instance, explain the dispersal of more than 100 Iraqi warplanes into Iran, calling it “a military topic which I prefer not to talk about.” And he brushed off a question about reports that Iraqi military commanders are using civilian shields by parking their equipment in school grounds and residential areas. “Your question shows bias,” he told the reporter. “How do you imagine that tanks could enter schools?”

Asked about reports of desertion among Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait, he “categorically denied” them, adding that there might be some isolated incidents involving troops who “were bribed or someone who is mentally unstable.”

When asked why the International Red Cross has been denied access to Western pilots shot down over Iraq and Kuwait and held as prisoners of war, an assistant to Hammadi said:

“When the aggressors talk about the Geneva Convention they should respect the Geneva Convention, but they do not do that. They have violated these conventions by attacking civilians, so when they do respect these conventions, we on our part will respect them as well.”

Times staff writers Rudy Abramson in Washington and J. Michael Kennedy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this story.