Global Policy Forum

By Martin Walker

The Bush Administration is pinning its hopes of avoiding war on James Baker's legendary persuasive skills and the conviction that he can orchestrate a diplomatic encounter with President Saddam Hussein which is neither a negotiation nor an ultimatum but somehow results in the appearance of a bloodless victory for the US.

This will not be easy when Congress proved so unready to endorse the freedom to go to war which the United Nations Security Council finally delivered after a month of diplomatic arm-twisting.

The UN was brought round by a mixture of intensive personal diplomacy, wheedling, and bullying by the U.S. Mr Bush even phoned the Malaysian Prime Minister in a Tokyo restaurant to swing his country's vote. But a blunt threat to cancel Yemen's $ 70 million in US aid failed to remove the impoverished republic from Iraq's side.

The combination of US diplomatic strength and Saudi money spoke volumes. This week's $ 1 billion Saudi credit to Moscow, and the forgiveness of $ 3 billion in Egyptian debts to Saudi Arabia were the sub-text to the more overt diplomacy.

But there are parts which Saudi cash cannot reach. American public opinion is so far proving surprisingly resistant, even though Kuwait has launched a multimillion dollar effort through the Hill & Knowlton public relations company, which happens to be run by Mr Bush's former chief of staff, Craig Fuller.

The Administration has been so intent on overcoming the hesitancies of Congress and the public that it may have misjudged the impact on President Saddam of the latest proposal for direct US-Iraqi talks before the UN mandate for force comes into effect.

In Baghdad the impression is understandably taking hold that normal diplomacy is being resumed and the bazaar is now open for the traditional forms of haggling and negotiation. Even while insisting that they will not settle for anything less than the UN resolutions, Mr Bush and Mr Baker have also signalled that some form of territorial re-adjustments may emerge from later talks between Kuwait and Iraq.

So while on the one hand the US ordered this week an extra 300 warplanes to the Gulf and cleared the diplomatic decks for war, on the other hand the prospects for a negotiated settlement seemed to revive.

In the week when the UN Security Council vote for the military option was supposed to convince Iraq that withdrawal from Kuwait was the only way out, President Saddam now has reason to suspect events may be swinging his way.

Some of this is Iraqi self-delusion. The Ministry of Information has even interpreted the departure of Mrs Thatcher from the political scene as a victory for Baghdad. But the evidence of the opinion polls in the US and the cautionary speeches heard this week in testimony before Congress has not been lost on Iraq, whose radio programmes last week began broadcasting Arab translations of the anti-war speeches of the Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.

For Iraq the real question now is the width of Mr Baker's negotiating mandate. Speaking on NBC-TV's Meet The Press, Mr Baker hinted that the US could be ready to give Saddam Hussein some comforting signals, including an undertaking that the US would not try to topple him from power.

"There has never been a suggestion that force would be used if the UN resolutions were fully compiled with," Mr Baker said. "That would give him [Saddam] some assurances that his reward would not be a military attack."

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