U.S. Envoy Never Gave Green Light to Hussein, Aziz Says

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not believe that U.S. envoy April Glaspie had given him a green light to seize Kuwait and expected a severe U.S. reaction, an Iraqi leader said in an interview published Thursday.

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz told the Turkish daily Milliyet that he was present at a controversial meeting between Hussein and Glaspie just before the Aug. 2 invasion.

“She didn’t give a green light, and she didn’t mention a red light because the question of our presence in Kuwait was not raised,” Aziz told former Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who interviewed him in Baghdad last week.

Iraq released a transcript of the meeting early in the Gulf crisis that fueled criticism in the United States that the ambassador had not been forceful enough in warning Iraq away from Kuwait.

Aziz said Hussein and Glaspie had discussed an Iraqi memo to the head of the Arab League complaining about the Kuwaiti government.

“About that . . . she said, ‘We don’t interfere.’ And we didn’t take it as a green light . . . that if we intervened militarily in Kuwait, the Americans would not react. That was not true. We were expecting an American attack on the morning of the second of August.”