Gulf War Threat Eases; Pentagon Remains Wary

The threat of war in the Persian Gulf seemed to recede Saturday, with Iraq’s last Republican Guard division apparently preparing to leave southern Iraq and Defense Secretary William J. Perry telling American troops here that they “saved the United States, saved the world from war.”

The elite Iraqi troops, who raised new fears by stopping and redeploying 100 miles from the border three days ago, were now ready to comply with American demands that they depart, Perry said. And Iraq’s information minister said “the time has come to transfer those troops” to their former positions.

“The encampment they’re making right now, according to our intelligence, looks like a temporary encampment rather than digging in,” Perry told Army troops stationed here. “It looks like they’re simply waiting for the transportation they need to take them north.”

In Washington, the Pentagon was more cautious in its assessment.

“We don’t have any indication that they are digging in, but we also don’t have any indication that they are preparing to leave, so it’s still a big question mark at this point,” one senior Pentagon official said.

President Clinton noted in his weekly radio address to the nation Saturday that a “significant” number of Iraqi troops were still “within striking distance of Kuwait.”

“This is a day of decision for America and the world,” Clinton later told a political rally in Bridgeport, Conn. “We will stay there until we are sure the threat is gone.”

Perry’s threat Friday to use military force if the troops did not leave southern Iraq, and signs of possible diplomatic solutions to the crisis Baghdad had sparked, appeared to have prompted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to resume the withdrawal, analysts here said.

Diplomats in the Gulf also saw the sharp increase Saturday in anti-American rhetoric from Baghdad as a sign that Iraq wanted to put the best face on its decision to end the military buildup on the Kuwaiti border.

Iraqi Information Minister Hamid Youssef Hammadi described Washington’s anger over the halted retreat of one division as “a tempest . . . stirred by the Americans.” And the Iraqi government newspaper, Al Jumhuriyah, portrayed the crisis as a defeat for the American President.

“What happened has completely cornered Clinton,” the newspaper said. And it likened Clinton to “the veteran criminal George Bush,” who as President during the 1991 Persian Gulf War was the target of similar personal attacks.

The paper, in a reference to scandals in the Clinton presidency, said the Gulf crisis had “exposed” Clinton’s “weakness, indecisiveness, infidelity and crooked financial practices.”

Late Saturday, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning Iraq’s military movements and demanding the immediate withdrawal of Revolutionary Guard units to their original positions. The resolution also bars Baghdad from using its forces in a hostile or provocative manner to threaten either its neighbors or U.N. operations in Iraq.

Madeleine Albright, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, issued an implied threat of force against Iraq if it failed to abide by the resolution.

“Let me assure this council that . . . my government will take all appropriate action if Iraq fails to comply with the demands of this resolution,” Albright said after its unanimous adoption.

An Iraqi Information Ministry official condemned the resolution Saturday. Writing in a Baghdad newspaper, Nouri Marsoumi said the United States “may have thought that Iraq is an American state and (that) the last thing left for it is to ask for a seat in the operations room of the Iraqi army.”

The United Nations will also be asked in coming days to consider a peace plan drawn up by Hussein and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev in meetings last week in Baghdad.

Kozyrev, who met Kuwait’s leaders Saturday and planned to head to New York today, told reporters here that he is still confident of winning support for the plan despite strong opposition from the United States and Britain and a lukewarm response from Kuwaiti leaders.

The proposal, which would secure formal Iraqi recognition of Kuwait in exchange for Moscow’s help in lifting U.N. sanctions that have crippled Hussein’s regime, “does not mean any reward for (Iraq) in this crisis,” Kozyrev said.

But, he added, the United Nations should lift the sanctions if Iraq recognizes Kuwait’s disputed border and allows U.N. officials to monitor Iraq’s military financing, among other U.N. conditions. Kozyrev’s argument was bolstered by U.N. weapons inspectors who said Saturday that the Iraqis were cooperating in the task of dismantling weapons of mass destruction.

All signs Saturday were that the immediate crisis in the oil-rich Gulf had passed. Half of the estimated 80,000 Iraqi troops that massed on the border with Kuwait a week ago had already moved north of the “no-fly” zone, Perry said. The United States had threatened to deploy more troops and even use force if Iraq did not pull its tanks and soldiers out of that zone.

“I believe we have been successful in deterring the war with Iraq,” Perry told Army troops at Kuwait’s airport before leaving for a three-day visit to China. Nevertheless, the defense secretary said the current American deployment will continue.

“One of the lessons we’ve learned from all this is preparedness works and is the key to responding rapidly to ground forces in an emergency,” Perry said.

American officials say about 3,300 troops are on the ground in Kuwait, with a 2,000-member Marine Expeditionary Force off the coast.

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) traveling with Perry, said Kuwaiti officials had given their personal assurance “that this nation together with all other Gulf nations . . . will help to defray very substantially the cost of this operation.”

In pep talks to troops on two of the 19 warships in the Persian Gulf, Perry lauded the U.S. military as an effective deterrent to rambunctious dictators, and he vowed that U.S. forces will remain at “high readiness” until all Iraqi troops retreat.

But he added: “The good news is . . . you’ll probably be able to go back home on your regular deployment time. That’s back in California before Christmas.”