Deployment Has Backfired, Iraq Envoy Says

Iraq’s decision to deploy thousands of troops near its border with Kuwait backfired and has dealt “a big--but not insurmountable--setback” to Baghdad’s effort to get out from under the United Nations’ crushing economic embargo, Nizar Hamdoun, Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday.

Hamdoun said that President Saddam Hussein acted without informing his top foreign policy adviser, Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, who was in New York at the time trying to negotiate an end to the sanctions that have all but devastated Iraq’s economy.

Hamdoun’s remarks represented an extraordinarily candid assessment for a senior Iraqi official, as Hussein is a ruthless dictator who has repeatedly stamped out all dissent.

But U.S. experts said that the U.N. ambassador’s statements, made in an interview Wednesday, reflect increasingly visible tension between hard-liners in Baghdad, who apparently urged Hussein to move the troops south, and the Foreign Ministry, which has been trying to end the embargo through negotiations.

Aziz and Hamdoun were at the U.N. ambassador’s Manhattan apartment last Friday when they were shocked to see a report of the deployment on Cable News Network, Hamdoun said. The two had been working with Russian and French diplomats to try to shape an embargo proposal that would win U.N. support, and neither of them had any idea that the troops were on the move, he said.

Aziz was “livid” that the deployment had undermined their efforts at the United Nations, according to an American source who is in frequent contact with Iraqi officials.

The next day Aziz left for Baghdad, stopping briefly in Amman, Jordan, to confer with King Hussein. During the Persian Gulf War, the king sided with Baghdad, but in the current confrontation he has vowed to join in defending Kuwait.

In Baghdad, Aziz told Hussein that the United States was mounting a massive military buildup and was serious about confronting any Iraqi threat. The Iraqi leader, apparently persuaded, ordered the troops withdrawn.

State Department officials refused to comment on Hamdoun’s account.

But a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, Phebe Marr of the National Defense University, said that increasingly visible disagreements have emerged between hard-liners in Baghdad and Foreign Ministry officials such as Hamdoun and Aziz.

“There is clearly a split between doves and hawks,” she said. “The divide has been in the press in Baghdad for weeks.”

Although Hussein apparently remains in firm control, she said, “there is more debate going on, and more cracks in the regime than there used to be.”

Hamdoun and Aziz have been the most visible “doves,” working for the last year to get the U.N. sanctions lifted and, now that “it has blown up in their faces, it’s understandable that they might be upset,” Marr said.

Most prominent among the “hawks,” she said, is Hussein’s son Uday, who publishes Babel, a daily newspaper.

“Babel has attacked Tarik Aziz directly,” she said. “Uday is saying that the Foreign Ministry is wrong, that the negotiations can’t work because the United States is not going to lift the sanctions and that the only correct strategy for Iraq is to raise the costs to the West of maintaining the sanctions.”

Aziz, a veteran foreign policy adviser, and Hamdoun, former Iraqi ambassador to the United States, both had extensive dealings with U.S. officials before Washington broke off relations with Baghdad in 1990 as a result of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the war.

Hamdoun, in an interview over lunch at a New York restaurant near his office, said Hussein’s deployment of the troops was designed to get the attention of the U.N. Security Council, which has been monitoring Iraq’s progress in meeting U.N. disarmament demands.

Iraq, he insisted, is in full compliance with U.N. disarmament demands dealing with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. And until the deployment of the troops, he said, Russian and French diplomats had reacted positively to Iraq’s efforts. But he pointed out that U.S. and British officials had adamantly opposed lifting the sanctions.

The United States and Britain maintain that Iraq has not fulfilled several of the conditions for lifting the embargo, including recognition of Kuwait’s sovereignty and resolution of a dispute over the border. France and Russia acknowledge that, but argue that some relaxation of the embargo would encourage Hussein to meet the rest of the U.N. terms. They also argue that the suffering of Iraqi citizens, unable to affect their regime, is too great.

Hamdoun indicated that Iraq was also prepared to deal with the issues of Kuwait’s border and its sovereignty rights and that he had received information that the Kuwaitis were interested in negotiating but that Washington had rejected the idea.

At one point as Hamdoun spoke, his cellular telephone rang. The Iraqi foreign minister, Mohammed Said Sahaf, was calling.

After a brief conversation, Hamdoun put down the phone. He looked relieved. “He said all the Iraqi troops have been withdrawn from the area near Kuwait,” Hamdoun said. “The Russian and Chinese military attaches are in the area seeing the troops removed and will report back to their governments.”

Hamdoun indicated that, with the massive U.S. military buildup, Baghdad is bracing for a punitive strike even though the Iraqi troops have withdrawn. He said his course will be to “just continue working with the French and Russians to try to get the sanctions lifted.”

Hamdoun served as Iraq’s ambassador to Washington from 1983 to 1987, which he called the heyday of the two countries’ relations. At that time, Washington was backing Iraq in its war with Iran.

Returning to Iraq, he served as deputy foreign minister until 1992 when he was named Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations. He now lives in New York with his wife and two daughters, 11 and 10 years old, both born in Washington.

Hamdoun expressed frustration over the fact that American officials refuse to deal with Iraqi officials even at the United Nations. He said that Aziz had called on U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright, but she had refused to see him.

Nelson reported from New York and McManus from Washington.