Gorbachev Plan Urges Kuwait Pullout, Pledges Iraq Survival : Diplomacy: U.S. receives details but withholds comment. Aide to Hussein travels to Baghdad with Soviet proposal. Preparation for a land offensive continues.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a surprise attempt to avert a fast-approaching ground war between Iraq and U.S.-led forces, delivered his own peace plan to a top Iraqi official on Monday.

Although details of the proposal were not immediately available, Soviet spokesmen said the plan is “fully in line” with United Nations demands for unconditional withdrawal of Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait, promising at the same time that the state of Iraq will survive.

White House officials said President Bush received a lengthy cable from Gorbachev that detailed the Moscow proposal.

But presidential Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said that “the Soviets have asked that we treat the substance of this account as confidential. Thus we will not comment further on it.”

Bush met late into the night with Secretary of State James A. Baker III and other top advisers, including Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Officials said that, barring a dramatic turnaround, allied forces will continue to prepare for a massive ground offensive against Iraqi forces in the near future.

“No change of mission has been given to Central Command,” a Pentagon official said.

Fitzwater denied as “totally erroneous” reports that the Soviets had asked the United States to delay the start of a ground attack against Iraqi troops.

The Soviet proposal “doesn’t require any response from us,” he said. “This is between the Soviet Union and Iraq.”

Soviet presidential spokesman Vitaly N. Ignatenko said Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz received Gorbachev’s plan “with interest and understanding” and left immediately for Baghdad, using a Soviet jetliner placed at his disposal. Aziz was expected to fly to Tehran, then travel overland from the Iranian capital to Baghdad.

“We are looking for a very speedy answer to the proposals that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev has made,” Ignatenko emphasized. Soviet officials said they expected that Hussein would be briefed on the plan by today at the latest.

Declaring the Gorbachev-Aziz peace talks “a decisive turning point between war and peace,” the Iraqi regime expressed optimism about them Monday while continuing to prepare its people for the devastation of a ground war.

Iraq’s official media provided no specifics of Moscow’s proposed political solution to the Persian Gulf War, nor did they hint at Baghdad’s reaction to the plan.

But it was clear that Iraqi President Hussein was laying the political groundwork for either an immediate withdrawal of his occupation troops from Kuwait or a bloody fight to the finish.

Gorbachev revealed his proposals to Aziz during a three-hour meeting at the Kremlin. Aziz had come to Moscow to elaborate on Friday’s peace offer from Baghdad, which the Kremlin and the Bush Administration said was unacceptable.

Soviet officials were tight-lipped about Gorbachev’s move but said his suggestions hewed to the policy goals backed by the Kremlin and the Administration in U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“The Soviet message to Iraq is . . . you leave unconditionally, but you know at least that if you leave, you can survive, and there will be no further interference in the internal affairs of Iraq,” Sergei Gregoriev, a deputy spokesman for Gorbachev, told Britain’s Independent Television News.

“I would not call it a personal message (to Hussein),” Gregoriev added. “This man needs a kind of plan to save his face, and at this stage it may be time to tell him . . . that his administration will survive.”

Gregoriev said the plan presented to Aziz was more or less accurately outlined in a report published by the German newspaper Bild. On the other hand, a Soviet diplomat in Washington cautioned that the Bild report “is logical, but not necessarily correct.”

Bild, citing “well-informed sources in Moscow,” said the points contained in the Gorbachev proposal are:

* That Iraq should withdraw from Kuwait, without any preconditions, to make a “quick peace” possible.

* That the Soviet Union would commit itself to maintaining Iraq’s state structure and borders.

* That the Soviet Union opposes all sanctions against Iraq and any punishment against Hussein personally.

* That all further issues, including the Palestinian question, should be debated.

The Soviet diplomat in Washington said Gorbachev’s proposals did not retreat from the U.N. demand that Iraq pay reparations to Kuwait.

German government spokesman Dieter Vogel said Gorbachev interrupted his talks with Aziz to discuss the peace plan with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, but Kohl’s office did not reveal any details of the plan.

Ignatenko told a news conference at the Foreign Ministry press center in Moscow that Gorbachev’s actions were motivated by the specter of intensified allied military operations against Iraq, which some Soviet military and civilian officials say already go far beyond what was authorized at the United Nations, and by Baghdad’s willingness, expressed last week for the first time, to contemplate leaving Kuwait.

“Bearing in mind the necessity of avoiding a further escalation of war in the Persian Gulf and being mindful of the Iraqi statement of Feb. 15, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev has proposed a concrete plan of action to resolve the conflict in the Persian Gulf area through peaceful means,” Ignatenko told the news conference.

Pressed by journalists, Ignatenko said the proposals had not been cleared beforehand with the Bush Administration despite an ongoing “active exchange of communications” with U.S. officials.

Asked if a possible halt in hostilities had been discussed so that Gorbachev’s plan could be implemented, Ignatenko answered, “There was no such conversation with Washington.”

Radio Moscow, in its hourly news bulletins, said there was a consensus that the Gorbachev-Aziz meeting was the last chance to prevent massive bloodshed in the Persian Gulf region by negotiating a settlement that would make land warfare on a large scale unnecessary.

Before departing in the Aeroflot Tupolev 154, Aziz told reporters at the VIP airport in southern Moscow that his encounter with Gorbachev was important, but he made no substantial comment.

According to Soviet sources, the atmosphere was correct, but cool. “Vremya,” the state-run television’s evening news program, aired a brief report that showed an unsmiling Gorbachev sitting down at the negotiating table across from Aziz and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi.

Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh and Gorbachev’s personal Gulf envoy, Yevgeny M. Primakov, also took part in the talks.

Over the weekend, Soviet officials and official media had lambasted the numerous conditions attached by Baghdad to its Friday offer to pull its armed forces out of Kuwait. These conditions included an Israeli withdrawal from “occupied Palestine” and the pullout of U.S.-led forces from the Gulf.

After listening to Aziz, however, Soviet representatives thought they detected an important nuance, according to Ignatenko. The Iraqi minister apparently made it clear that not all measures demanded by his government had the same degree of importance or would have to be carried out concurrently.

“I would put it this way: Mr. Aziz explained these were not conditions, but a program,” Ignatenko said. “There is a difference here. A program contains points: Point No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, etc. A program and conditions are different words in our lexicon.”

That reasoning implied that the Iraqis might be satisfied with a commitment to future action in some areas, rather than, say, demanding that a withdrawal of the coalition’s ground forces from Saudi Arabia take place at the same time as an Iraqi pullout from Kuwait.

Achieving a settlement in the Gulf War would be a major coup for Gorbachev. Awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize largely for not opposing the peaceful revolutions that doomed Communist rule in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev is highly unpopular at home, and his standing abroad has also slumped because of the violent actions by Soviet soldiers and police in the Baltic republics.

Many segments of Soviet society oppose their country’s policy of supporting the anti-Iraq coalition, believing that it is inimical to Soviet interests to make common cause with the United States against a longtime Kremlin ally or to sanction U.S. military actions near Soviet borders.

The extent of the divisions in the leadership were dramatized Monday by Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, Gorbachev’s personal military adviser.

“What’s going on right now (in Iraq) does not correspond to the (U.N.) mandate,” Akhromeyev complained to reporters at the Kremlin. “Because when they kill peaceful civilians by the hundreds and strike at bomb shelters, this has not been approved by the Security Council.”

Although the White House refused public comment on the Soviet plan, private statements by Administration officials before the plan was received did provide certain guidelines for what the Administration would consider acceptable.

On the one hand, officials said, the United States would specifically reject any plan that did not include a full, rapid and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Officials have made clear that as part of such a withdrawal, Iraqi troops would have to abandon their tanks and other heavy equipment as they departed.

On the other hand, if Hussein is willing to accept that sort of withdrawal--which officials admit is designed specifically to humiliate the Iraqi leader and reduce his stature in the Arab world--Bush and his aides were prepared to accept a plan that would leave the Iraqi regime in power in Baghdad.

Officials say that despite Bush’s intense distaste for Hussein, the President would have no choice but to accept a settlement leaving the Iraqi leader in place if Iraq withdraws. That is because neither Bush nor any of his advisers are willing to see American troops go beyond the Kuwaiti battlefield and attack Iraq in an attempt to drive Hussein from power.

In Baghdad, hopes for imminent peace were expressed most strongly in the Monday editions of Al Thawra, the official organ of Hussein’s Arab Baath Socialist Party, which began its front-page commentary by declaring:

“There are high hopes and expectations in Moscow that the Iraqi-Soviet talks will be a decisive turning point between war and peace.”

But, at the same time, Al Qadissiya, the newspaper of Iraq’s armed forces, fell back on the regime’s traditional hard-line rhetoric, boasting that military morale was high and that the Iraqi army was prepared to repel and destroy any allied ground offensive.

“The army has prepared all necessary means and power to make the ground war a killing zone and a graveyard for all the invaders dispatched to the region,” the newspaper said.

Military commanders backed their rhetoric with claims broadcast on Baghdad Radio, which announced that Iraqi missile batteries had been pounding the allies’ front-line positions on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The military communique asserted that the allies’ “all-powerful weapons . . . will explode in their faces.”

Between the lines of Baghdad’s own proposal for a political settlement Friday, the Hussein regime actually had suggested that victory was already in Iraqi hands.

The statement of its ruling Revolutionary Command Council declared: “The United States and its allies launched a dirty and cowardly war against a proud and brave people.

“Iraq triumphed in this confrontation. It triumphed because it remained solid, courageous, faithful, dignified and strong-willed.”

In outlining its Friday proposal, which was quickly declared unacceptable by Washington and its allies because of nearly one dozen attached conditions, the Command Council said the plan was put forth “in appreciation of the Soviet initiative” that had been carried to Baghdad earlier in the week by Gorbachev’s personal envoy, Primakov.

The earlier statement also made clear that if Iraq was going to make a deal, it intended to do it through Soviet auspices, which now could be viewed as a foreshadowing of a possible breakthrough.

In Amman, Jordan, Foreign Minister Taher Masri also underlined the Soviet connection in describing Jordan’s hopes for a political settlement.

“I must point specifically to the efforts of the Soviet Union, because I am under the impression that (Friday’s) Iraqi initiative came as a result of the contacts between the government of Iraq and the government of the Soviet Union.”

In Tehran on Monday, President Hashemi Rafsanjani said that despite the Western rejection of Friday’s Iraqi outline, the Baghdad initiative has “fortunately produced positive results,” referring to Moscow’s determination to play an ongoing role in the process.

Moscow and Tehran, however, are sticking to their demands for an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The rush of diplomacy with the ground war looming appears to reflect attempts by Iran and the Soviet Union to persuade Hussein to withdraw with some face-saving appearances.

Staff writers David Lauter, in Washington; Nick B. Williams Jr. and Mark Fineman, in Amman, Jordan, and Tyler Marshall, in Berlin, contributed to this story.

THE SOVIET PROPOSAL

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz produced a proposal calling for Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait and promising that Iraq will survive, said Gorbachev spokesman Sergei Gregoriev . He said the plan is “more or less” reflected in this summary by the German newspaper Bild:

* Iraq should withdraw from Kuwait, without any preconditions, to make “a quick peace” possible.

* The Soviet Union would commit itself to maintaining Iraq’s state structure and borders.

* The Soviet Union opposes all sanctions against Iraq and punishment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein personally.

* All further issues, such as the Palestinian question, should be debated.