The Gulf It's All in the Wording

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The U.S. has managed to hold together the worldwide coalition against Iraq. Strains and threats abound, and Saddam Hussein has made adroit attempts to exploit them. But fundamentally, the coalition is still united.

More or less. For now.

George Bush uses much more upbeat language, of course. So do Mikhail Gorbachev, Francois Mitterrand and other leaders of the coalition. And it is true that no one has edged away from the central demand: Iraq must get out of Kuwait. But whether, and to what extent, the other members will continue to back American ideas on how to achieve that goal -- especially as Washington comes closer and closer to converting what has always been an implicit threat of war to a very explicit one -- remains uncertain.

The U.S. has concluded that the next step in the campaign against Saddam must be a United Nations Security Council resolution approving the use of military force if necessary to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. And it plans to push through such a resolution this week, while American delegate Thomas Pickering is president of the Security Council and in control of its agenda (under the council's system of monthly rotation, Pickering will step down after Friday, Nov. 30). Rounding up support for that resolution was the focus of intense American diplomatic efforts last week, including talks by President Bush with other government leaders at the 34-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) gathering in Paris and travels by Secretary of State James Baker from Yemen, which holds the Security Council presidency in December, to Colombia.