Bush focus: A lasting peace
By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff, 3/02/1991
The meeting, which had been scheduled for today, was delayed at least until tomorrow or possibly Monday, administration sources said last night. They said the Pentagon had been informed by US military officials that delay was needed to handle "logistical problems."
During a news conference exactly a week after issuing his ultimatum for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or face a withering ground assault, Bush said yesterday that he could not savor the euphoria of the allied victory with so many other longstanding disputes in the region yet to be resolved.
"I want to move fast," Bush said, on three major issues: the fate of the Palestinians, the future of Lebanon and the normalization of Iraq's relationship with the rest of the world.
Though he sounded somber during the news conference, Bush was decidedly more upbeat when he addressed a meeting of state legislators earlier in the day.
"It's a proud day for America," he told the legislators.
"By God, we've kicked the Vietnam Syndrome, once and for all."
Bush, who is spending the weekend at Camp David, will address a joint session of Congress Wednesday on the war and its aftermath.
Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d will visit the Middle East next week for talks with Arab and Israeli leaders. A senior administration official said Baker will carry no new specific plan or concept for trying to break through the Arab-Israeli impasse.
The war zone was generally quiet yesterday except for isolated clashes with Iraqis who apparently did not know a cease-fire was in effect.
A US Army doctor and a medical specialist were reported killed by mines when they left their vehicle to approach surrendering Iraqis. A bus carrying Iraqi soldiers was destroyed and six of them were killed after they fired on American units, officials said.
"The battlefield is still a very, very dangerous area," Brig. Gen. Richard I. Neal, the US Command spokesman, told reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Total US combat deaths rose to 89, 10 more than had been reported previously, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly said at a Pentagon briefing. Those included 23 killed before the ground offensive, 38 during the two-day land assault and 28 in a Scud missile attack on a US barracks in Saudi Arabia.
As many as 100,000 Iraqis are believed to have been killed or injured in the war. Yesterday, British forces dug mass graves for some of those soldiers on a battlefield in Saudi Arabia.
US Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who leads the coalition forces in the gulf, will head the allied military team in their meeting with Iraqi commanders. Schwarzkopf will be joined by Lt. Gen. Khalid Bin Sultan, the Saudi military commander, officials said.
Bush said he expects the session to result in Iraq promptly releasing the 15 or so allied pilots known to have been taken prisoner during the war. About 45 Americans are missing.
Italian officials said yesterday that their country's Red Cross has been informed that all prisoners in Iraqi hands are in good condition. Estimates of the number of Iraqis captured by US-led troops range as high as 165,000.
Asked whether he expected Iraq to comply with a major condition of the temporary cease-fire and return the prisoners, Bush replied: "They'd better."
Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Richard Cheney issued an even more explicit warning.
"I think we've reached the point where the Iraqis would do very well to listen carefully to what we say and then do it," Cheney said. "We've destroyed their army . . . we've turned the lights out in Baghdad.
"Unless and until they comply very explicitly with UN Security Council resolutions, return our prisoners immediately, they're going to have more grief."
At the United Nations, meanwhile, the Security Council's five permanent members were reported last night to be close to agreement on a US-inspired resolution spelling out peace terms in the gulf after the Bush administration dropped a key provision threatening the resumption of force.
Diplomats said that objections during a meeting of the five, particularly
from the Soviet Union and China, had resulted in a deletion of a clause asking the council to approve combat operations if Iraq failed to comply with the list of peace terms.
The draft resolution, which will be voted on later by the Security Council, sets out actions Iraq is expected to take and reaffirms the 12 council resolutions adopted since Baghad's Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.
It also reinforces terms that Bush set out when he suspended combat operations last Wednesday but avoids giving the council authority to declare a formal cease-fire.
Even with their humilitating defeat and as remaining Iraqi troops retreated, officials in Baghdad remained defiant yesterday.
"All foreign forces must leave our country immediately and stop all provocations," Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz told the Iraqi News Agency, according to Baghdad radio.
He said US troops were not acting in accordance with the cease-fire, and he complained about continued reconnaissance flights over Iraq.
The official media also were defiant. One newspaper ran this headline: "By God's will and the might of our leader Saddam Hussein, we foiled the aggressors' plot."
Bush and Baker denied a report by the French newspaper Le Monde that Saddam Hussein was seeking asylum in Algeria.
White House officials said Bush has not decided whether to let Saddam Hussein go to another country or prevent such as move so that the Iraqi leader could be tried for war crimes.
At his news conference, Bush said he was unwilling to let any Iraqi official, including Saddam Hussein, escape prosecution for atrocities. "I cannot wave a wand and absolve somebody from the responsibilities under international law," he said.
There were also these developments yesterday:
- In Kuwait City, American soldiers hoisted the flag outside the US Embassy as Ambassador Edward Gnehm arrived to assume his post. His predecessor had taken the flag back to Washington in December.
- US military officials said that the Iraqi security forces responsible for atrocities in Kuwait City apparently had escaped before allied forces reclaimed the capital. Gruesome stories continued to emerge about killings and torture committed by those forces during their seven-month occupation.
- UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said disease and hunger could kill more Iraqis than the fighting did, and he dispatched a special envoy to the region to assess what the world body can do "to prevent catastrophes from occurring."
In his first meeting with reporters since starting the ground war, Bush seemed surprisingly somber.
"To be very honest with you, I haven't yet felt this wonderful euphoric feeling that many of the American people feel," Bush said. "I'm not gloomy about it; I'm elated. But I just want to finish my part of the job. . . . I still have a little bit of an unfinished agenda."
He added, "I will work very hard for peace, just as hard as I have in the prosecution of the war. I think there is a better climate now and we're going to test it. . . . We're going to try to lead to see whether we can do something."
A priority item on his postwar agenda, Bush indicated, is getting Saddam Hussein removed from power. Although he said the United States is not targeting him for assassination or capture, the president reiterated his call on the Iraqi people to topple their leader.
"I've already said that the Iraqi people should put him aside and that would facilitate the solution of all these problems," Bush said.
Bush rejected spending "one single dime of US taxpayers' money" for rebuilding Iraq. Baghdad should use the profits from its oil trade for reconstruction, he said, though he added that he would allow American assistance for medical supplies and to help children.
Bush said he envisioned a continued US presence in the gulf but not a large one for American troops, of whom he said: "I'd like to see them all out of there as soon as possible."
Cheney said the pullout of 537,000 US soldiers will begin "within the next couple of weeks." He cautioned, though, that it might take six months for all of them to return home.
A senior military official in Riyadh said that cloud cover over Kuwait and southern Iraq had prevented any extensive battle damage assessment until yesterday.
But Neal, disclosing figures compiled by Marine forces only, said the Marines destroyed, damaged or captured 1,060 Iraqi tanks, 608 armored personnel carriers and 432 artillery pieces during the 100-hour ground war.
The Marines, Neal said, were responsible for a fraction of the battlefield. Altogether, the allied forces have estimated that Iraq lost about 4,000 of the 4,200 tanks it had in the war zone.
"Was it a rout? Damn right it was a rout," he said.
Walter V. Robinson in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Adam Pertman, both of the Globe staff, contributed to this report.
ASHINGTON -- As allied commanders prepared to meet with their vanquished Iraqi counterparts to set the terms for a permanent cease-fire, including the exchange of prisoners, President Bush declared yesterday that he is ready to work "just as hard" to forge an enduring peace in the Middle East as he did in winning the Persian Gulf war.
