U.S. Leverage in Truce Deal Could Aid Rebels--Cheney

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Friday that the United States and other members of the United Nations could gain leverage to end the killing of rebels in Iraq by “managing” implementation of the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War, particularly the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq.

He stopped short of saying that a halt in the killing should be made an explicit condition of lifting the U.N. sanctions.

But, in an interview with editors at The Times, Cheney said that “managing that process by which we implement the terms of the cease-fire, lift the embargo and withdraw the sanctions gives us, I think, a fair amount of leverage” over the Iraqi government and what it does.

Cheney suggested using a U.N. Security Council resolution approved Friday that demanded that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his forces stop their military onslaught against the rebels and allow humanitarian groups to provide aid. While the resolution applies pressure through public condemnation, it does not mention economic sanctions.

Apart from its value as an instrument of international pressure, Cheney gave no indication about how the resolution could be employed to gain any direct leverage. He cited its demands that Iraq end its repression of the rebels and open access to humanitarian agencies and added: “We ought to continue to push that aggressively.”

Cheney made the assertion as President Bush, under criticism for refusing to send military aid to the rebels, ordered U.S. Air Force planes to drop food, blankets, tents and other relief supplies to Kurdish rebels who have fled for their lives to the mountains of northern Iraq.

In his interview, Cheney also said:

It was “the right thing” for Bush to encourage the rebellion in Iraq even though the rebels, fighting without help, are being slaughtered by the Iraqi army.

It is “just goofy” to accuse the Administration of feeding the public a deliberately overstated assessment of Iraq’s military strength before the war began.

Although the United States had no intention of targeting Hussein for assassination or death as a military target during the war, it in fact did not have enough information from its intelligence sources to know for sure where he was at any given time.

In their postwar search through the Kuwaiti theater of war, which includes Kuwait and southern Iraq, allied forces have so far found no Iraqi chemical munitions--and he believes the Iraqis did not use any during the war because they feared retaliation in kind by the United States or Israel.

Although American soldiers are doing civilian work in Kuwait, down to feeding animals in the zoo, some of the work is being done under contract and some is volunteer work--and he would disagree that the troops are a work force for Kuwaiti royalty.

The war was an “enormous endorsement” of the President’s capabilities as a leader, and they will be so recognized not only in the 1992 election but throughout history.

Cheney does not have “any idea” whether he will run for President himself in 1996. He said he is “fatalistic” about such things, but he did not rule it out.

As for the immediate future, Cheney said the United States might beef up its naval forces in the Persian Gulf, as well as pre-position heavy armor and maintain “a more robust air presence” in the Gulf states. He said the U.S. Central Command might send an administrative unit into the area permanently. The unit might total “a couple of hundred people.”

“We would perhaps fly in a brigade from time to time,” Cheney said, “to operate jointly with forces in the region.”

Specifics, he said, are under negotiation with governments in the area.