U.N. Skirts Lebanon Clashes, Sends Envoy to Iraq

The Security Council, dealing on Wednesday with the mounting trouble in the Middle East in different ways, avoided a public debate on the latest round of Israeli-Lebanon violence but dispatched a high-powered envoy to Iraq in hopes of pressuring the recalcitrant Iraqis to cooperate with future U.N. inspections.

And, in a possible harbinger of even more tension ahead, the council warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of “serious consequences” if he does not cooperate.

On another trouble front in a hectic time for the United Nations, the council moved a step closer to imposing sanctions on Libya.

Lebanon had asked for an “urgent meeting” of the council after Israeli forces killed the leader of the pro-Iranian, Islamic fundamentalist group known as Hezbollah in a swift air attack in southern Lebanon on Sunday.

But U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering persuaded the council that an acrimonious debate would do little but exacerbate Arab-Israeli tensions at the coming sessions of the Middle East talks.

As a result, the council met in public for barely a minute while Pickering, who is serving as president this month, read a statement on behalf of the 15 members. The statement deplored “the renewed and rising cycle of violence in southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the region” and called for “maximum restraint in order to bring such violence to an end.” There was no debate.

On the Iraqi problem, the council told Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, to fly to Baghdad immediately to secure “the unconditional agreement by Iraq to implement all its relevant obligations” under the U.N. resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.

The Hussein government has been playing a kind of game with U.N. officials over the resolution, which requires indefinite inspections to ensure that Iraq never again poses a threat to its neighbors. While Iraq has not announced its refusal to accept such inspections, it has not announced its acceptance either.

On Libya, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali reportedly ordered Undersecretary General Vasily S. Safronchuk to return to Tripoli for a second try at persuading Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to extradite two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December, 1988.

If he fails, as expected, the council plans to pass a resolution imposing sanctions against Libya.