Iraq’s Intentions Probed in U.N. Council Debate : Conflict: Member countries discuss the scope of the war in a rare closed-door session.

The U.N. Security Council, holding a formal session behind closed doors for the first time in 15 years, began a major debate Thursday over the scope of the Persian Gulf War.

The unusual session was marked by the presence of additional U.N. security personnel and the absence of the public and the media. It was designed, U.S. officials said, to offer a “serious give-and-take session”--the first on the war since the council voted Nov. 29 to authorize the use of military force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

At one point during the four-hour meeting, British Ambassador David Hannay posed four questions to Iraq’s ambassador, other delegates later reported.

Hannay demanded to know how allied prisoners are being treated and whether Iraq would abide by the Geneva Conventions. Hannay also asked whether the Baghdad government would promise not to use chemical or biological weapons and when it would withdraw its troops from Kuwait.

Iraq’s ambassador, Abdul Amir Anbari, did not answer.

Instead, during his speech to the Security Council, as related by other delegates, Anbari charged that the United States had violated the Geneva Conventions by bombing civilians. He pledged that the war against Iraq “would not be an easy picnic.”

Later, outside the council chamber, where Anbari repeated some of his closed-door remarks, he was asked why he had not mentioned Kuwait in his speech. He bristled.

“What’s wrong with that?” the Iraqi envoy asked. “I didn’t mention China either.”

U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering said that during the council meeting, Iraq was asked by a number of delegations: “When are we going to hear from your government about the withdrawal?”

The United States and Britain headed the effort to ban all media coverage, contending that televising the debate could harm the interests of the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq and provide Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with propaganda material.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the Bush Administration wanted Thursday’s session kept private so that it could be conducted “without sending out any signals to the Arab world or anyone else that might be misinterpreted about the U.N.’s resolve in this matter.”

A British motion to exclude the public and the media passed Wednesday by a vote of 9 to 2, with four abstentions.

As a compromise, the text of the Security Council meeting will be made public a day late.

The last time the Security Council met in private was on Nov. 6, 1975. The subject was the Western Sahara.

The exact form of the meeting was the subject of intense, closed-door wrangling in the council before the actual debate--consisting largely of set speeches--began. More than 20 speakers were scheduled to address the council, with the speeches continuing today.

Both the U.S. and German delegations offered hints at the speeches planned by their ambassadors, and both texts called strongly for implementation of U.N. resolutions demanding an Iraqi withdrawal from occupied Kuwait.

Mohammed Abulhasan, the Kuwaiti ambassador, was first to speak Thursday. According to his text, he painted a vivid picture of conditions inside his country. He charged the Iraqi occupation troops with widespread brutality, including the rape and mutilation of women. Abulhasan appealed to the international press corps in Baghdad to use all means possible to try to visit Kuwait and report on the suffering of the civilian population.

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar came under virulent criticism by Iraq on Thursday.

Iraq’s information minister, Latif Jasim, charged that developments in the war, including the bombing of a structure in Baghdad in which hundreds of civilians were reportedly killed, proved that Perez de Cuellar is “a filthy and criminal conspirator.”

Iraq’s government said the secretary general “is no longer suitable for the position he holds.”

Perez de Cuellar’s response was characteristically low-key.

“I don’t understand how during this terrible situation they have time to attack the secretary general,” he said. “I don’t pay attention at all to their insults.”

The other major focus of Persian Gulf-related diplomatic activity Thursday was Moscow. Kuwait’s foreign minister said there that a special Soviet envoy had found encouraging first signs of Iraqi flexibility in talks with Hussein earlier this week but that these must now be tested in further discussions.

“I understand from the Soviet leadership that the Soviet envoy met with some flexibility in Baghdad,” Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, the Kuwaiti foreign minister, said after meeting Thursday with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser, Yevgeny M. Primakov, had returned late Wednesday from Baghdad speaking optimistically, although cautiously, of “rays of light” and “glimmers of hope” and of the importance of opening a dialogue on peace.

The Iraqi foreign minister, Tarik Aziz, is due in Moscow on Saturday with what Soviet officials said they hope will be a positive response from Hussein on “an approach to a peace formula” based on Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with the U.N. Security Council resolutions but including other elements such as a Middle East peace conference.

Sabah said he would travel immediately to Cairo for talks with Egyptian, Syrian and other Arab diplomats on the developments.

“We must consider this problem within our Arab home,” he said of various Soviet ideas for postwar moves that might also make it easier to arrange a cease-fire and Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

Sabah said that both Gorbachev and Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, the Soviet foreign minister, had reiterated Moscow’s firm support for the restoration of Kuwait’s independence and sovereignty and assured him that the current diplomatic initiatives will not undermine that commitment.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, meanwhile, is due in Moscow today for further discussions with Soviet leaders on the current Iranian initiative in the Gulf as Moscow becomes a focal point in efforts to end the crisis.

Vitaly I. Churkin, the chief spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said Moscow is undertaking “very energetic efforts aimed at implementing the U.N. resolutions and, on that basis, achieving a cease-fire.”

The Soviet Union is in the midst of “very extensive consultations,” Churkin said, and is working closely with Iran on its latest initiative.

In other diplomatic activity, the foreign ministers of Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are expected in Moscow on Saturday, and there is conjecture that all three may have the war on their agenda.

Gorbachev’s talks with Aziz could prove decisive, Soviet diplomats suggested, for Primakov had made clear to Hussein “the utter devastation” his country faces if it does not withdraw from the sheikdom it invaded in August.

“We gave Hussein our frankest appraisal of the probable course and outcome of the war,” a senior Soviet diplomat said. “Iraq, it was clear, would not recover for generations. . . . It would become practically a trusteeship run by a multinational oil company.”

Churkin described the message that Primakov carried from Gorbachev to Hussein as “very strong advice to withdraw from Kuwait.”

Goldman reported from the United Nations and Parks from Moscow.