New York Times September 23, 1990 CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF

CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF; U.S. Gave Iraq Little Reason Not to Mount Kuwait Assault
By ELAINE SCIOLINO with MICHAEL R. GORDON, Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 In the two weeks before Iraq's seizure of Kuwait, the Bush Administration on the advice of Arab leaders gave President Saddam Hussein little reason to fear a forceful American response if his troops invaded the country. The Administration's message to Baghdad, articulated in public statements in Washington by senior policy makers and delivered directly to Mr. Hussein by the United States Ambassador, April C. Glaspie, was this: The United States was concerned about Iraq's military buildup on its border with Kuwait, but did not intend to take sides in what it perceived as a no-win border dispute between Arab neighbors. In a meeting with Mr. Hussein in Baghdad on July 25, eight days before the invasion, Ms. Glaspie urged the Iraqi leader to settle his differences with Kuwait peacefully but added, ''We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,'' according to an Iraqi document described as a transcript of their conversation. Details of U.S. Diplomacy Portions of the document, prepared in Arabic by the Iraqi Government, were translated and broadcast by ABC News on Sept. 11 and were the basis of accounts by The Washington Post and The Guardian of London. The State Department declined to confirm the accuracy of the document, but officials did not dispute Ms. Glaspie's essential message. As those and other details of the Administration's diplomacy

have unfolded in recent weeks, its handling of Iraq before the invasion has begun to draw strong criticism in Congress, even among those who generally support the Administration's military action in the Persian Gulf. Some lawmakers have asserted that the Administration conveyed a sense of indifference to Baghdad's threats. Interviews with dozens of Administration officials, lawmakers and independent experts and a review of public statements and the Iraqi document show that instead of sending Mr. Hussein blunt messages through public and private statements that an invasion would be unacceptable, the State Department prepared equivocal statements for the Administration about American commitments to Kuwait. Arab Assurances on Invasion The American strategy, carried out primarily by the State Department but approved by the White House, was based on the assumption that Iraq would not invade and occupy Kuwait. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who assured the Bush Administration that Mr. Hussein would not invade, argued that the best way to resolve an interArab squabble was for the United States to avoid inflammatory words and actions. Some senior Administration officials said the strategy was also rooted in the view that Washington - and most of the Arab world - probably could live with a limited invasion of Kuwait, in which Iraqi forces seized bits of Kuwaiti territory to gain concessions. ''We were reluctant to draw a line in the sand,'' a senior Administration official said. ''I can't see the American public supporting the deployment of troops over a dispute over 20 miles of desert territory and it is not clear that the local countries would have supported that kind of commitment. The basic principle is not to make threats you can't deliver on. That was one reason there was a certain degree of hedging on what was

said.'' Effect of a Harder Line Even in the days before the invasion, there was a consensus inside the Administration and among outside experts that Mr. Hussein would not invade despite largely correct intelligence assessments of the military buildup on the ground. ''There would have been a lot of fluttering if there had been a partial invasion,'' said an Administration official. ''The crucial factor in determining the American response was not the reality but the extent of the invasion.'' It is not clear that taking a harder line would have made a difference in Baghdad's decision to take Kuwait, and some Administration officials argue that if they had they would now be accused of pushing Mr. Hussein toward extreme actions. As the Administration's policy toward Iraq before the invasion has come under criticism in Congress, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of experts who report to President Bush on intelligence issues, has also begun a postmortem on the handling of the crisis. Flawed Policy on Baghdad The Administration was following what President Bush acknowledged last week was a flawed policy toward Iraq, a policy built on the premise that the best way to handle Mr. Hussein and moderate his behavior was through improving relations with Baghdad. That assessment presumed that Iran and Iraq, both exhausted by their eight-year border war, would focus on domestic reconstruction, not foreign adventurism. As a result, the Bush Administration failed to calibrate its policy to take into account a string of belligerent statements and actions by Mr. Hussein in recent months, including the execution of a

British journalist and a threat to use chemical weapons against Israel. ''We were essentially operating without a policy,'' said a senior Administration official. ''The crisis came in a bit of a vaccum, at a time when everyone was focusing on German reunification.'' In the days before the invasion, Administration officials sent mixed signals about the American commitment to Kuwait's defense. Speaking With One Voice Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, for example, was quoted as telling journalists at a press breakfast on July 19 that the American commitment made during the Iran-Iraq War to come to Kuwait's defense if it were attacked was still valid. The same point was also made by Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, at a private luncheon with Arab ambassadors. But Pete Williams, Mr. Cheney's chief spokesman, later tried to steer journalists away from the Secretary's remarks, adding that Mr. Cheney had been quoted with ''some degree of liberty.'' From that moment on, there was an orchestrated Administration campaign to speak with one voice, and speak quietly. On July 24, when Margaret D. Tutwiler, the State Department spokeswoman, was asked whether the United States had any commitment to defend Kuwait, she said, ''We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait.'' Asked whether the United States would help Kuwait if it were attacked, she replied, ''We also remain strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom we have a deep and longstanding ties,'' a statement that some Kuwaiti officials said privately was too weak.

Bush's Forceful Tone Two days before the invasion, John H. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, essentially repeated the same message in Congressional testimony. Even after the invasion, there was unease in some quarters in the State Department over Mr. Bush's tough public stance. On Aug. 6, when President Bush clearly committed the United States to roll back Iraq's conquest of Kuwait, Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d expressed reservations about the wisdom of the forceful tone of Mr. Bush remarks, according to Administration officials. On Tuesday, at a hearing before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Representative Lee H. Hamilton sharply chided Mr. Kelly for not taking a tougher stance against Iraq in his testimony before the invasion. ''You left the impression that it was the policy of the United States not to come to the defense of Kuwait,'' said Mr. Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat. ''I asked you if there was a U.S. commitment to come to Kuwait's defense if it was attacked. Your response over and over again was we have no defense-treaty relationship with any gulf country.'' Policy Guidelines Followed Bush Administration officials assert that Kuwait never asked for American troops or sought to join in joint military exercises with American forces. Mr. Cheney told a breakfast group on Capitol Hill on Thursday that ''the fact was, there was literally nothing we could do until we could get access to that part of the world, and the attitude of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states has been consistently that they didn't want U.S. forces on the ground over there.'' On July 25, a week before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Ms.

Glaspie was quickly summoned to Mr. Hussein's office in Baghdad, and she faithfully followed conciliatory policy guidelines sent to her from the State Department. In their conversation, Mr. Hussein described an American conspiracy against him since the end of his war with Iraq, and warned the United States not to oppose his goal of getting economic concessions from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, according to the document described as the official Iraqi transcript, which ABC News made available to the New York Times. Miss Tutwiler said Friday that the State Department would not reveal the contents of a diplomatic exchange. 'We Too Can Harm You' According to the Iraqi document, Mr. Hussein also suggested that he would use terrorism to curb any effort by the United States to try to stop him from achieving his goals. ''We too can harm you,'' he said according to the document, adding, ''We cannot come all the way to the United States but individual Arabs may reach you.'' But at another point in the document, he characterized the feud with his neighbors as an inter-Arab dispute, adding that the solution ''must be found within an Arab framework and through direct bilateral negotiations.'' Ambassador Glaspie stuck to the State Department line that President Bush wanted good relations with Iraq. Citing concern about Iraq's large troop buildup on the border and threatening remarks by Mr. Hussein in a number of his statements, she said that she had received instructions from Washington ''to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not in the spirit of confrontation regarding your intentions.'' In a long reply, Mr. Hussein said he and the Kuwaiti leadership had agreed to negotiate their differences. ''But if we are unable to

find a solution,'' he said, ''then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.'' Some officials say they are convinced that Iraq had already made a decision to invade when President Hussein met the American Ambassador and that Mr. Hussein's talk of a possible peaceful resolution was an effort to deceive Washington. ''To suggest that we are to blame for all of this and we lulled them into thinking they could have Kuwait is really terrible,'' a senior official said. ''But we should have had a stiffer tone. It is unlikely to have made a difference, but it might have made a difference.'' ----------------------