U.N. Issues Strict Terms as It Votes Formal End to Iraq War : Truce: Baghdad’s envoy denounces the resolution. The Security Council measure would install a peacekeeping force on the border, require reparations and oversee destruction of weapons.

Eight months after Iraq’s troops stormed across the border into Kuwait, members of the Security Council voted Wednesday to formally end the Persian Gulf War and to give the United Nations an unprecedented role in the peacekeeping process.

The resolution, however, is dependent on Iraq’s acceptance of some of the strictest measures of surrender in military history. While some U.S. officials said privately that they expect Saddam Hussein to agree to the terms, his U.N. ambassador denounced the resolution and left doubt as to Iraqi compliance.

“I do not know whether my government will accept this or reject this or accept it conditionally or reject it unconditionally,” said Abdul Amir Anbari. “My recommendation is that this is a very bad resolution that infringes on the sovereignty of my country.”

Twelve of the Security Council’s 15 member nations voted for the measure. Only Cuba rejected it. Ecuador and Yemen abstained.

Diplomats said that if Iraq accepts the cease-fire resolution--the longest and most complex in the U.N.’s 45-year history--the international organization will undertake tasks historic in scope.

In one of the core provisions of the resolution, the United Nations would oversee the cataloguing and destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, its nuclear bomb-making materials and its long-range missiles. A U.N. peacekeeping force would be sent to the troubled border between Iraq and Kuwait and help demarcate the boundary.

The measure declares that Iraq is liable for injury, damage and loss of property stemming from its Aug. 2 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, including damage to the environment. It directs U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to help supervise the establishment of a fund, using a percentage of Iraq’s oil revenues, to pay compensation for damages to the war’s victims.

If Iraq accepts the terms of the resolution, the next step would be for military officers of Iraq and its enemies, the U.S.-led allied coalition that defeated Hussein’s army, to meet and sign the truce document, formalizing what has been a temporary cease-fire since late February. If Iraq does not accept the resolution, a formal cease-fire will not take effect.

Even if Hussein agrees to abide by the resolution, strict sanctions--subject to periodic review--will continue to ensure Iraq’s compliance.

The measure allows for the progressive lifting of sanctions if Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are eliminated, if the Baghdad government respects the border between Iraq and Kuwait set in 1963, and if Iraq pledges to the Security Council that it will not commit or support any act of international terrorism.

The resolution calls for review by the council every 60 days of the state of Iraq’s compliance, with an eye toward lifting economic sanctions.

But sanctions against the sale of weapons, spare parts and all types of military materials will remain in place. The sanctions will continue against allowing military personnel to enter Iraq from foreign nations to conduct training of troops or maintenance of weapons systems.

In a last-minute compromise with the Soviet Union, the clause banning ballistic missiles was softened to allow Iraq to keep missiles with a range under 95 miles.

Characterizing the resolution as “tough” but “fair,” U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering told members of the Security Council, “We are again today turning a new page in the council’s affairs.

“This resolution to establish peace and security in the region has no precedent, for the circumstances it addresses are without precedent in the history of the United Nations. Troops have gone into battle before under the U.N. Charter, but the United Nations has never before taken measures to rebuild the peace such as those contained in this historic resolution.

“It is our hope,” Pickering said, “that the people of Iraq will insist on putting the disaster which their leaders have created behind them, and will join with the rest of the international community in building a foundation for lasting peace and security.”

British Ambassador David Hannay said the council’s action “marked a clear, firm and effective determination of the world community not to allow the law of the jungle to overcome the rule of law.

” . . . There are many small countries in each region of the world that have cause to worry from their larger, better-armed neighbors. They should be able to sleep more securely in their beds after this episode. Just think on the contrary how they would have felt had Saddam Hussein been allowed by the United Nations to enjoy the fruits of his aggression.”

In a statement released by the White House, President Bush said, “I am extremely pleased that the Security Council has voted in favor of Resolution 687. It is now up to Iraq’s government to demonstrate that it is prepared to respect the will of the world community and communicate its formal acceptance of this resolution.”

While many observers believe that ratification of the cease-fire would trigger a quick U.S. withdrawal from the 20% of Iraq it holds, Pickering made it clear that no pullout would be automatic.

Pickering told the council that Iraq’s acceptance of the resolution would make possible the withdrawal of allied forces, but he said U.N. observers would first have to be deployed. Only then, Pickering said, would “coalition forces . . . withdraw from Iraq as rapidly as possible, consistent with operational requirements and logistic considerations.”

Under the terms of the resolution, Perez de Cuellar, after consulting with Iraq and Kuwait, is required to submit within three days to the Security Council his plan for the immediate deployment of a U.N. observer unit to monitor a demilitarized zone extending six miles into Iraq and three miles into Kuwait.

Iraq’s Ambassador Anbari has indicated privately to U.S. and U.N. officials that his country is willing to accept U.N. peacekeepers on its side of the border. But he strongly objected to other parts of Resolution 687.

Anbari, addressing the Security Council before the vote, raised the possibility that President Hussein might accept the resolution but add conditions of his own.

On the issue of the boundary with Kuwait, in which the council accepts Kuwait’s claim of a 1963 border, Anbari said that Iraq “reserves its right to demand its legitimate territorial rights in accord with international law.”

On the issue of reparations to Iraq’s victims, Anbari--who is his country’s highest-ranking diplomat in the United States--turned the issue on its head, saying that “Iraq reserves its right to ask for reparations for all losses that occurred” because of allied bombing.

But Kuwait’s U.N. ambassador, Mohammed A. Abulhasan, countered that any such conditions would amount to rejection of the resolution.

During the debate, Washington was under pressure from some delegations to look beyond the Iraq-Kuwait issue and consider the turmoil of the Middle East as a whole, particularly the Arab-Israeli question. In response, Pickering promised, “My government will exploit whatever opportunities there may be for unblocking progress on the resolution of other problems in the region, including Arab-Israeli issues.

“We have opportunities before us now, in the Gulf and the Middle East, which my government is determined not to waste,” he pledged.

Before the council met to vote Wednesday, Pickering sought to put the resolution in perspective.

The measure “will attempt to do something that indeed the United Nations or no one else has ever done before, which is to seek to take possession of chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles in Iraq and Iraq’s illegal nuclear program and see those particular implements of war controlled and destroyed,” the U.S. ambassador said.

“This is a far-reaching step,” he said. “We have never tried it before. It is a step beyond all arms control agreements and, indeed, it may be a hallmark for the future.”

Soviet Ambassador Yuri M. Vorontsov stressed that the resolution could be a template for dealing with future aggression and aggressors.

“The requirements of this resolution are aimed not only at restoring justice, but to issue a serious warning to others who are inclined to embark on a path of aggression and annexation,” Vorontsov told the council.

For the last several months, U.N. officials have been planning for an observer force and have solicited nations for contributions. U.N. officials said that Perez de Cuellar was prepared to get the first contingent of troops moving within 48 hours of council approval of his plan. Troops are expected to come from such traditional donors to previous peacekeeping forces as Sweden, Austria, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.

The U.N. peacekeeping force will not include troops from the multinational coalition aligned against Iraq during the war.

U.S. officials indicated that the Bush Administration is eager to withdraw American troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. Washington exerted intense pressure on the U.S. delegation here to speed passage of the resolution.

The 3,900-word resolution, the longest and most complex in the Security Council’s history, was so massive that Zaire’s representative suggested that Perez de Cuellar send it to the “World Book of Records” to be registered.

Vorontsov, in the days before the vote, parodied frequent wartime exhortations by Iraq’s Hussein by calling the measure “the mother of all resolutions.”

After the vote, Iraq’s ambassador took the microphone again to reply to the barrage of charges that Hussein is ruthlessly suppressing rebellions by Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebels in Iraq.

Anbari blamed the uprisings on “subversive groups who had been hiding in neighboring countries.”

After they infiltrated into Iraq, the ambassador said, “the Iraqi army rooted them out.”

“While they were withdrawing, they forced quite a number of people to flee with them,” he charged.

Iraq’s ambassador denied that Hussein’s government intends to repress the Kurdish-speaking people, who have long sought an independent homeland that would incorporate parts of Iraq and other nations in the region.

“We are very proud of them, and they are a very important part of Iraq’s society. . . . They are most welcome to return to their families and homes,” he told the council.

But France’s U.N. representative, Jean-Marc Rochereau de la Sabliere, said his nation is “profoundly concerned” about the plight of Iraq’s civilian population.

“Unfortunately, the civilian population . . . is the victim of unjustified violence practiced against it in the south and north of the country,” he said.

After the meeting, the president of the Security Council, Paul Noterdaeme of Belgium, began consultations on the Kurdish problem.

France had suggested language Tuesday for a separate resolution condemning all forms of repression in Iraq and calling on the Baghdad government to start a broad-based dialogue to respect the rights of all Iraqi peoples. It requested Perez de Cuellar to make a report on the fate of the Kurdish population.

But the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, pushed other council members into considering the end-of-war resolution first. The French plan may be taken up in council consultations as early as today.

The other two permanent members of the council are France and China. The non-permanent members are Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Ecuador, India, Ivory Coast, Romania, Yemen, Zaire and Zimbabwe.

During Wednesday’s session, Kuwait’s Ambassador Abulhasan was the first to address the council.

“We cannot speak of the dawn of a new international order without punishing the outlaws,” he said.