The Gulf It's All in the Wording

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Gorbachev is under conflicting pressures. He needs Western economic help, and thus has a strong incentive to cooperate with the U.S., but he also must retain the support of the Soviet army, which hates to see Moscow take a back seat to Washington in international affairs. On top of that, Moscow sources suggest Gorbachev is getting conflicting advice from Shevardnadze, who takes a pro-U.S. line toward Iraq, and Yevgeni Primakov, a Middle East expert who has served as Gorbachev's personal representative on missions to Baghdad and still insists that a negotiated solution is possible. So the Soviet President is vacillating; he has virtually committed the U.S.S.R. to back some sort of Security Council resolution, but how strongly worded is most uncertain. American diplomats say they would gladly sacrifice some forceful language to maintain international unity. How far can they water down a resolution, however, before it begins to sound to Saddam not like an affirmation of unity but like a sign of a split, barely papered over?

Primakov is not the only one advocating negotiations with Saddam; German Chancellor Helmut Kohl used the word repeatedly after a meeting with Bush last week. The President said they were in sync, since both want a peaceful solution, but that seems doubtful. In Washington's view, so long as the coalition sticks to its core demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait totally and unconditionally, there is nothing to negotiate: Saddam either complies or he doesn't and must be forced out.

Talk of negotiations, however, taps into a deep vein of opinion, in the U.S. as well as abroad, that Bush is rushing pell-mell toward war. Officials in the British Foreign Office are concerned that other allies might be veering toward a settlement that lets Iraq keep part of Kuwait, if that seems the only alternative to fighting.

Saddam has done his best to play on such sentiment. Last week he announced that Iraq was sending an additional 250,000 troops to Kuwait. Some may be reservists who would not fight well, and Iraq might have trouble maintaining so large a force in the face of American air raids on supply lines. In poker terms, though, Saddam was seeing and raising Bush, who had earlier announced plans to send American reinforcements, estimated at 150,000 to 200,000 troops, to the area. Saddam's counter is likely to intensify world fears of war.

Simultaneously, the Iraqi dictator pledged to free all hostages, in installments, between Christmas and March 25 -- just about the time period that Washington sees as the window for effective military action -- on condition that Iraq is not attacked. Saddam further promised to free immediately all German hostages (roughly 180) as a reward for Kohl's talk of negotiations and as an encouragement to the U.S. and Britain to be similarly reasonable. That the U.S. has held its coalition together so far in the face of such threats and blandishments is a remarkable achievement. But it is an achievement that will get harder to maintain the closer the world moves toward war.