Russian Aid Flight to Iraq Stalled

No one in the West thought it was a very good idea in the first place: a group of grandstanding nationalist lawmakers from Russia heading for Iraq with a planeload of medicine and with plans to portray Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as the victim in the current high-stakes standoff.

So when the technicality of getting formal U.N. approval for the humanitarian flight from Moscow to Baghdad came up over the weekend, U.S. and British diplomats demanded that the mission wait until today, when the U.N. sanctions committee could weigh the request.

In light of those demands, Iran and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan refused to let the Russian aid flight cross their airspace, and Russian authorities hesitated to let the aircraft take off for territory where it was unwanted.

And in anger at their stalled publicity stunt, the 50 deputies of the Duma, accompanied by as many as 150 reporters covering their antics, boarded the lumbering Ilyushin 86 jet anyway, took their sagging seats and declared a hunger strike--until the plane was finally allowed to fly as far as Armenia.

If it were not for the fading hopes of peace in the Persian Gulf, the scene at Vnukovo Airport on Sunday might have been funny.

But as tensions escalate over Iraq’s defiance of U.N. resolutions prohibiting its manufacture or possession of weapons of mass destruction, Russia’s intervention and attempts to persuade Hussein to back down are among the few active diplomatic efforts aimed at averting another military conflict.

The Russian parliamentary delegation was to have taken off from Vnukovo Airport at 10 a.m. Sunday, but the plane and its determined occupants were forced to wait on the tarmac for more than 12 hours.

Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist hothead leading the mission--at least vocally--spent the day inside the aircraft screaming outrage through his cellular phone to the Echo of Moscow radio station.

“The reason for this situation is the direct involvement of American agents located within the Foreign Ministry, the leadership of Russia and around the president,” Zhirinovsky said to listeners with his trademark ranting.

He also warned the Kremlin leadership, which was paying him no apparent attention, that his ill-named Liberal Democratic Party would call a no-confidence vote against the government Wednesday and vote down the 1998 budget unless the delegation was in Baghdad by Wednesday.

The plane was cleared for takeoff at 10:17 p.m. but could get no farther than the Armenian capital, Yerevan, because of the pending issue of U.N. approval.

The Liberal Democrats and all splinters of the fractured Communist Party control the rowdy Duma, the lower house of parliament, but have little real influence in foreign or domestic affairs.

But in a gesture aimed at irritating the West and embarrassing the Kremlin over its unsuccessful diplomatic measures, the political opponents of President Boris N. Yeltsin organized the relief flight.

Russian air controllers let the plane take off for Yerevan, but the duty officer at Vnukovo said the crew was expecting to have to spend the night in the Armenian capital because Iran and Azerbaijan were still refusing to allow overflight without an OK from the U.N. panel.

Even the hunger strike appeared to fall short of expectations. News agencies quoted a television correspondent on the plane as saying that all food and drink on board had been consumed by the time of takeoff.