Baghdad Says It’s Ready for Serious Talks : Iraq: But Hussein won’t bend on linking the Palestinian issue to crisis. Senior diplomats are sent back to their posts.

BAGHDAD, Iraq —  A group of senior Iraqi diplomats were dispatched back to their overseas posts Thursday, and the government said it is ready for “serious and constructive dialogue” to avert war. But officials denied that Iraq is launching a new peace initiative.

Kuwait’s foreign minister said it is too late for peace initiatives in the Persian Gulf, maintaining that only military force will dislodge Iraq from the oil-rich emirate that it invaded Aug. 2.

On Wednesday, with less than three weeks remaining before the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein met with 20 diplomats who had been recalled to Baghdad, diplomats said on condition of anonymity. They included Iraq’s envoys to the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations.

“We are ready for a serious and constructive dialogue based on mutual respect and the rejection of the course of hegemony and arrogance which the American Administration tries to impose on us,” the state Iraqi News Agency quoted Hussein as telling the diplomats.

But Hussein repeated his demand to link an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip with any Iraqi pullout from Kuwait, the diplomats said. The United States has rejected any such linkage.

Hussein showed little willingness to compromise on the issue. Iraq is “ready to take any sacrifice for the battle it wages against the United States and its allies,” the news agency quoted him as saying.

Iraq also denied reports surfacing in recent days that Hussein was preparing a diplomatic initiative ahead of the Jan. 15 deadline.

The diplomats said the envoys were beginning to leave Iraq on Thursday to return to their posts overseas.

Hussein met with Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Igor Belousov about the gulf crisis on Thursday, the Tass news agency said in Moscow. Belousov was also arranging for Soviet citizens remaining in Iraq who want to leave to be evacuated by Jan. 10. There were no other details on their discussions.

Kuwait’s foreign minister, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, said that only military force will dislodge Iraq from Kuwait.

“The whole world has given enough time for a peaceful settlement of the gulf crisis,” Sabah told a news conference during a visit to Beijing.

“Whether by the Arab world, whether by the friendly countries, whether by the Third World countries or by the big powers, it is very late for such (peace) initiatives. It would not be useful,” he said.

Meanwhile, thousands of women and children marched past the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday to protest the boarding and diversion of a “peace ship”’ bound for Iraq in defiance of an international blockade.

The freighter Ibn Khaldoon was boarded off Oman on Wednesday by U.S. sailors, who scuffled with passengers and crew.

The ship, with 200 women peace activists and others aboard, was carrying sugar, rice, cooking oil and other cargo banned under U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

Iraqi Transport Minister Mohammed Hamza al Zubeidi accused the boarding party of beating the women activists. But a U.S. Navy spokesman said no evidence of injuries was found.

The Ibn Khaldoon was being escorted to an undisclosed destination after the interception.