Iraq Might OK Pullout Deal, Soviets Report

MOSCOW —  Iraqi President Saddam Hussein indicated to a visiting Soviet official that Baghdad might withdraw its troops from most of Kuwait if it could keep the islands that control Iraq’s outlet to the sea and a disputed oil field, a Soviet news agency reported Sunday. Iraq later denied the report.

Hussein told Yevgeny M. Primakov, who visited Baghdad earlier this month as an emissary of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that Iraq wants a diplomatic resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis and implied it is willing to make the necessary concessions, according to the government-run Novosti Press Agency.

This is what had encouraged Primakov, a leading Soviet specialist on the Middle East as well as Gorbachev’s foreign policy adviser, to express cautious optimism on prospects for a political solution as he left Baghdad a week ago, Novosti said.

“In the course of the talks, Saddam Hussein did not even mention Iraq’s ‘historic rights’ to Kuwaiti territory, and that was a definite softening of the stand of the Iraqi president,” Novosti said, summing up Primakov’s assessment of his negotiations with Hussein.

“From his comments, it follows that Iraq might withdraw its troops from Kuwait, retaining for itself southern Rumaila and the islands Warba and Bubiyan, which open the exit to the sea,” Novosti said.

But Iraq promptly denied the Soviet report, saying that it would never withdraw from Kuwait.

“There is no room for any compromise about Kuwait,” Latif Jasim, the minister of culture and information, said in Baghdad on Sunday. “Kuwait is the 19th province of Iraq, and this fact will not be changed whatsoever even if we have to fight a long war for that.”

Jasim said that the only basis for resolving the 2 1/2-month crisis is Hussein’s proposal linking it to a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese civil war and other Middle East problems. And that initiative, he added, was made “on the basis that Kuwait is part of Iraq forever.”

What Primakov heard as an envoy of Gorbachev on a mission coordinated with the United States and its allies, however, was apparently much different and led to his reiterated assessment of “cautious optimism,” another Soviet specialist on the Middle East said on Sunday.

“There was ‘give,’ ” he said. “Primakov was not hallucinating. Saddam Hussein realizes, finally, that he faces war, a war that he will inevitably lose, and that his best hope is a deal that saves face and, if possible, yields a bit of territory and money.

“The task now is turning ‘what ifs’ into ‘maybes’ and ‘maybes’ into ‘cans’ and ‘cans’ into ‘yes, do-ables’ and ‘do-ables’ into ‘agreeds.’ That is what Soviet diplomacy has been at work on for the past week.”

The basic Soviet position, however, remains unchanged--Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait immediately, unconditionally and completely with full recognition of Kuwait’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We want a return to the negotiating table with the situation on the ground as it was before Iraq invaded on Aug. 2,” a Soviet official said on Sunday, elaborating on the Primakov report. “The positions would then be the same but the attitudes perhaps will have changed, making a compromise easier.”

Iraq shares the Rumaila oil field with Kuwait and, before the invasion, Baghdad had accused Kuwait of stealing its oil by pumping more than its share from the southern sector of the oil field.

Bubiyan and Warba are two islands that face the Shatt al Arab waterway, Iraq’s outlet into the Persian Gulf.

With these three areas, Iraq would be able to expand its oil production substantially and open new ports for oil export and general trade.

Iraq’s claims to Kuwait territory were among the official justifications for its seizure of the oil-rich sheikdom. Baghdad had denounced the rule of the emir of Kuwait as illegitimate. And it had accused Kuwait of enriching itself through the theft of Iraqi oil from the Rumaila field.

Moscow feels, as does Washington, that these issues can be negotiated after Iraq withdraws its troops from Kuwait. But the Kremlin also believes, officials here said, that there is more flexibility in Baghdad now.

A letter from Gorbachev has been sent to Bush detailing Primakov’s talks with Hussein and the Soviet assessment of peace prospects, according to Soviet officials.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd declared Sunday that Iraq’s Hussein can withdraw his forces from Kuwait “of his own free will or . . . at the point of a gun,” adding that the Western and Arab troops deployed in the Persian Gulf “will not wait forever.”

Sticking to London’s uncompromising line on the crisis, Hurd told an Egyptian audience in Cairo that a combination of pressures on Hussein may force him to withdraw.

While the British minister was delivering a tough line in Cairo, a key Hussein envoy, Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan, continued a trip to other Arab capitals of North Africa seeking support for Iraqi policy. Ramadan told reporters in Tunis that he had delivered a message to Tunisian President Zine Abidine ben Ali on “the latest developments in the gulf and a peaceful orientation for resolving them.” Ramadan met with Libyan leaders on Saturday.

While refusing to publicly countenance the possibility of giving up annexed Kuwait, Iraqi officials have changed the tone of their rhetoric in recent weeks to one supporting peaceful solutions to the confrontation. The Baghdad line attempts to portray Iraq as a victim of Western aggression, its trade embargoed and foreign military forces threatening its soil.

Here in Moscow, Novosti reported that negotiations between Primakov and Hussein over the departure of the 5,000 Soviet technicians, advisers and other specialists working in Iraq had become “quite complex.”

“This became a bargaining chip for the Iraqi side, a means of putting pressure on the Soviet leadership,” Novosti said. “The Iraqis demanded enormous compensation in case specialists departed before their contract obligations had been fulfilled. With great difficulty, Baghdad’s permission was obtained for 1,500 specialists to leave.”

Iraq warned the Soviet Union over the weekend that the departure of those specialists, 93 of whom are military officers, will be jeopardized if Moscow provides the United States with Iraqi military secrets, notably the capability of the weapons systems it has sold Baghdad and the capabilities of its forces.

In another development, Iran and Iraq reopened embassies in each other’s capitals Sunday, resuming full diplomatic ties and ending a decade of enmity, Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Times staff writer Nick B. Williams Jr. contributed to this report from Cyprus.

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