Bush Sends Baker to Turkey Amid a Diplomatic Flurry : Diplomacy: White House warns of ‘severe economic consequences’ in U.S. if the Iraqi occupation continues.
WASHINGTON — President Bush directed Secretary of State James A. Baker III to fly to Turkey, a key player in the Middle East crisis, as the White House warned Monday that there will be “severe economic consequences in the United States†if Iraq continues its military occupation of Kuwait.
A whirlwind of diplomatic activity Monday culminated in a United Nations vote for sanctions against Iraq, but contingency plans also were being laid to take even harsher action as concern mounted over the safety of Americans.
The Pentagon has drawn up a plan to enforce the trade sanctions with a naval blockade that would amount to an act of war. But if it wanted to blockade, the United States would seek the cooperation of its European allies, many of whom have long naval experience throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean.
A knowledgeable Pentagon source said that, while the blockade is a key military option, Washington currently favors a proposal under which hundreds of U.S. warplanes would fly to Saudi Arabian bases, from which they could threaten to delay and destroy an Iraqi advance on Saudi oilfields.
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, meeting in Saudi Arabia on Monday with leaders there, made an impassioned plea for a rapid Saudi decision to allow the U.S. aircraft in, officials said.
The President forcefully repeated Monday that he is “ruling out nothing at all†in his effort to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to pull his troops out of the small Persian Gulf country he invaded Thursday.
It is in the “national interest to stop Saddam Hussein,†White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater declared.
At the White House Monday, the President met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Manfred Woerner, and had dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi ambassador in Washington, Mohamed Mashat, was summoned to what was described as a “very tense†meeting with Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly. In Baghdad, U.S. Charge d’Affaires Joseph Wilson was called by Hussein for what State Department spokesman Margaret Tutwiler described as “a very serious meeting.â€
Officials expressed deep concern about the safety of the 3,500 Americans in Kuwait in general, and in particular about 28 who are believed to have been rounded up from hotels in the occupied nation and placed on buses that were believed headed for Iraq.
A State Department official said Monday that an unspecified number of additional Americans have been gathered by Iraqi forces in the ballroom of a Sheraton hotel in Kuwait city and that U.S. Embassy personnel have been denied permission to see them.
In addition, a spokesman for British Airways in New York confirmed that more than 200 of 367 passengers who were aboard a British Airways flight that landed in Kuwait last Thursday, shortly after the invasion took place, have been taken from their hotels in Kuwait city and were being driven to Baghdad. He said that although there were Americans on the flight, he could not say if Americans were among those headed to Iraq.
“We hold Iraq responsible for the safety of Americans and all foreign nationals,†said the State Department spokesman. The warning echoed a White House statement that the Administration “will not shirk†from its responsibility to protect Americans.
The State Department ordered all nonessential officials and dependents in the U.S. embassies in Kuwait and Iraq to leave both countries as soon as possible and urged all other Americans there to leave, too.
“The situation in Kuwait city and in Baghdad is chaotic,†a State Department spokesman said. “We are hopeful that people there would be able to leave or can leave as they want to. But, clearly, it is not a total freedom-of-movement situation.â€
Sources confirmed that units of the Delta Force, the elite, secretive hostage-rescue team, are now in the Middle East. However, a counterterrorism official played down the possibility that they would be used to rescue Americans.
“This is a major military adventure,†he said, indicating that those units alone would not be able to accomplish a rescue of so many Americans.
The aircraft carrier Saratoga and 13 other vessels prepared to leave Mayport, Fla., todayfor the eastern Mediterranean to join the carrier Eisenhower. At the same time the carrier Independence steamed toward the Arabian Sea to take up position at the mouth of the shallow, narrow Persian Gulf--as close as it can get to a launching point for a possible attack on Iraq. However, Administration officials and intelligence sources played down the likelihood of imminent military confrontation.
Bush and his advisers are wary of any military option involving a confrontation with the Iraqi armed forces because they realize that it would run the risk of an enormous loss of life, not only of U.S. military personnel, but also of U.S. civilians in the region.
Still, said Fitzwater, “we have discussed military possibilities and our abilities with all the countries in the gulf.â€
Iraqi forces were said by the White House and State Department to be showing no signs of retreat. Indeed, Fitzwater said that the troop presence along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border “remains extremely large and threatening.†And U.S. officials said they recognize that they are likely to get practically no warning of an Iraqi move to the south into Saudi Arabia.
Even if Saudi Arabia were to seek U.S. military support, such a move could prompt the Iraqis to make a preemptive strike, given the time it would take to get U.S. forces into position, an intelligence source said. He added: “What we’re asking ourselves in some of our discussions is, are we going to be in the position of defending the Saudis or liberating them?â€
In addition, U.S. officials pointed to the decision by the U.N. Security Council on Monday to impose a global economic and military embargo on Iraq. The move requires all member nations of the world body to bar oil imports from Iraq and Kuwait and to shut off arms shipments to the Baghdad regime. If that step is completely successful, U.S. officials pointed out, it would eliminate the need for a military blockade. Only if the embargo proves porous, they said, would a blockade be a possible next step.
“These sanctions will be enforced--whatever it takes,†Bush said.
With Bush facing his most tense public crisis during his 19 months in the presidency, the Administration appears to be attacking on two fronts: denouncing the Iraqi president in public and demanding that he withdraw his occupying troops, while embarking on a global diplomatic effort to line up support for a leak-proof economic embargo intended to strangle a struggling, cash-poor Iraq.
The focal points of the embargo are Turkey, which Baker will visit Thursday for talks with President Turgut Ozal, and Saudi Arabia, where Cheney met Monday with King Fahd. Oil, on which Iraq depends for its income, is shipped through pipelines to a Turkish terminal on the Mediterranean Sea and to a Saudi terminal on the Red Sea.
Bush has spoken twice in recent days with Ozal in an effort to persuade him to shut down the pipeline.
An Administration official confirmed that at least one of the two Iraqi pipelines through Turkey had been shut off by Iraq on Monday, because the storage tanks at the terminus are full and “the oil was going nowhere.â€
While the Administration’s goal is to undo last Thursday’s invasion of Kuwait, officials were working at the same time to maintain a delicate political balance between drumming up political support at home for whatever course Bush chooses and not inflaming the situation abroad.
Thus, officials took care to describe the Americans reportedly rounded up by Iraqis as “detainees,†rather than hostages. “We’re not using the H-word,†one counterterrorism official said. Further, the White House and Energy Department, recognizing the potential political price that could come with long lines at gasoline stations, emphasized the availability of gasoline even as they sought to cut off global access to oil from Iraq and Iraqi-controlled Kuwait.
“We would urge that people review the matter of oil availability calmly and rationally,†Fitzwater said.
In what an Administration official acknowledged was an effort by Bush to build a strong case for public backing, Fitzwater continued to stress the volatility of the situation in the region.
“The situation in the gulf remains extremely serious,†he said. “Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait threatens regional and world stability, threatens OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and could force severe economic consequences in the United States.â€
Fitzwater also raised questions about the accuracy of a Washington Post report Monday which said that Bush had ordered government agencies to plan moves to destabilize and topple the Hussein government. Fitzwater countered that rather than pursuing covert actions, the President is facing “an overt situation†in the threat posed by Hussein.
“His tanks are real and moving. Our response is real and moving on all fronts--diplomatic, economic, political and military,†Fitzwater said.
Later, he added: “We have a war situation. The man has attacked another country and invaded it. Certainly (he) threatens Saudi Arabia. Any response by the United States would be very overt and known to all.â€
Times staff writers Melissa Healy, Douglas Jehl, Maura Reynolds and Robin Wright contributed to this story.
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