Former Envoy to Iraq to Do Stint at UCSD

April C. Glaspie, the controversial former American Ambassador to Iraq, will be a “diplomat in residence” at UC San Diego for the academic year 1991-92, beginning in early September, the U.S. Department of State has announced.

Glaspie will be connected with the UCSD political science department, where she will be available for occasional lectures and discussions with students and faculty, said Paul Drake, chairman of the department.

“These sabbaticals go on all the time with ambassadors,” said David Good, spokesman for the State Department’s office of Near Eastern and South Asia affairs. The department pays the ambassadors’ salary, and the university merely provides office space, he said.

“She will be there to serve the university, to give hands-on realistic input to the university on international issues,” Good said.

Glaspie has been widely depicted as the scapegoat for what critics have termed the Bush Administration’s policy of appeasing Iraq before its invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 1.

She was prohibited for months from speaking publicly about her role in Baghdad, even after the Iraqi government released a transcript of a July 25 meeting between Glaspie and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in which she was depicted as being sympathetic to Iraqi views and saying the U.S. government was uninterested in Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait.

Only in March, before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did Glaspie give her version. She said that she repeatedly warned Hussein against violence to settle the Kuwaiti border dispute but said that the Iraqi leader was too “stupid” to understand that the U.S. would strongly react to any invasion.

Drake at UCSD said that Glaspie would be free to talk about “anything she wants to” but that there could be details of certain diplomatic conversations regarding her dealings with Hussein that she might not have permission to relate.

“In general, I don’t think there would be anything unusual she couldn’t talk with us about,” Drake said.

“I think this is going to be interesting for us, and we can’t wait until she arrives.”