Russia Says Iraq Approves Its Plan to Defuse Standoff

MOSCOW —  Russian officials claimed Tuesday to have worked out a peaceful resolution of Iraq’s tense standoff with the United Nations over weapons inspections and to have gained Baghdad’s endorsement of the plan during a lightning visit here by a senior Iraqi official.

Tarik Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister and President Saddam Hussein’s chief envoy in the standoff, flew to Moscow after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin sent a message to the Iraqi president earlier this week that “the Iraqi leadership couldn’t but react to,” Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov told reporters.

“The negotiations resulted in working out a certain program that we believe allows avoidance of a clash of forces and resolving the crisis by Iraq’s implementing relevant resolutions of the U.N. Security Council,” Primakov said after his talks with Aziz, who also met with Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin at the Russian White House and with Yeltsin at a country dacha 60 miles north of here.

But as a U-2 surveillance aircraft completed a mission over Iraq without incident Tuesday and President Clinton sent more American warplanes to the region, U.S. policymakers said they knew little of the Russian-Iraqi discussions and painted a continuing grim picture of the conflict with Baghdad.

“I think a lot of people have tried to decipher Saddam Hussein’s motivation over the years, and I think it’s a difficult undertaking,” said National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger. “At this point, I have not heard a statement from the Iraqis that they will permit the inspectors back on acceptable terms--that is, maintaining the integrity of the [U.N. weapons] inspection [program]. And until I hear that, I don’t think there’s any basis for believing there’s been any movement.

“I think it is clearly our preference to find a peaceful resolution, a peaceful and principled resolution to this,” he said. “But we are not ruling out other options.”

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, speaking later in the day, said that the United States had “no understanding of the details” of the Primakov-Aziz talks. “We don’t know what’s in it, so we can’t welcome it,” he said.

Iraq and the United Nations have been on the brink of another military confrontation since Baghdad on Thursday expelled American members of the U.N. Special Commission evaluating Iraqi compliance with Security Council resolutions prohibiting Baghdad from possessing weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has mobilized air and sea power in the Persian Gulf and has warned that military force could be used against Iraq, especially if it fires on the American U-2, on loan to the United Nations.

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Although Primakov spoke to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after his meeting with Aziz, he did not provide details of his talks with the Iraqi envoy, U.S. officials said.

Diplomatic sources in Moscow said Primakov planned to meet in Geneva with the foreign ministers of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and to telephone any of them unable to make the short-notice meeting.

Primakov, an Arabic-speaker with long ties to Iraq, had been scheduled to fly to Latin America today for a four-nation official tour, but he said that Yeltsin ordered him to first consult with his counterparts from among the permanent members of the Security Council. France, Britain, China and the United States share permanent status on the council with Russia.

In India, Albright canceled a morning trip to Agra, where she was to give a speech on environmental issues, to free time for telephone diplomacy with her French, British and Russian counterparts, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said. The long-distance diplomacy was expected to last well into the night and continue through this morning.

But U.S. officials with the secretary of State denied that any agreement had been reached about a possible meeting in Europe between Albright and the key players, despite word that she would fly from Asia to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vancouver, Canada, via Europe--not the more logical route across Asia.

Analysts said that, while the United States has encouraged diplomatic efforts by its allies to resolve the Iraqi standoff, Albright would be loath to go all the way to Geneva to discover herself presented with a Russian plan that the Americans cannot accept but also would find difficult to reject outright.

In Moscow, Aziz kept his distance from the media during a whirlwind of motorcades and closed-door negotiations. But Primakov indicated that the Iraqi leadership was amenable to the Kremlin’s “well-thought-out plan.”

The Iraqi Embassy here had described Aziz’s unexpected visit as aimed at “clarifying Russia’s position” in the brewing confrontation between the Security Council and Iraq.

While Moscow has been a longtime ally of Iraq and has been lobbying fellow Security Council members for an easing of sanctions against Baghdad, the Russian leadership has been restrained in its observations about the current crisis and has repeatedly counseled Iraq to defuse it.

No details of the plan the Russian leadership has drafted to end the standoff were disclosed. But analysts surmised that Primakov would try to persuade Washington to make a minor concession to Iraq in exchange for Baghdad’s eliminating the threat of renewed warfare.

“The problem is that no one knows what would be enough to satisfy Iraq,” Andrei V. Kortunov, head of the Russian Science Foundation think tank, said of speculation among Mideast policy analysts that Moscow would press Baghdad and Washington for some compromise.

“Primakov is trying to show that Russia can play an independent role and to show the Iraqis that Russia can negotiate a better deal for them,” said Kortunov, predicting that Primakov would argue for a slightly reduced presence of Americans among the U.N. Special Commission’s 100 weapons inspectors.

Political leaders seized on the purported breakthrough as evidence of Russia’s strengthening role in international crisis resolution.

“Good opportunities are emerging for Russia to show itself as a peacemaker,” said Vladimir P. Lukin, head of the international affairs committee of the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament.

Lukin described as erroneous Russia’s acquiescence to the strict sanctions now in effect against Iraq and appealed for some easing of the trade embargo once Baghdad allows the U.N. Special Commission to resume its inspections unimpeded.

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Moscow has repeatedly called for changes in Security Council resolutions punishing Iraq for its provocation of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, arguing that Baghdad will remain fractious until it “can see light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Russia has done its best for finding a political way out of the situation,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Tarasov told journalists at a briefing.

Tarasov reiterated the Kremlin’s view that Hussein must comply with the Security Council resolutions providing for unrestricted monitoring of Iraqi weapons sites, and he urged Baghdad to cease obstructing members of the Special Commission. But he added that Russia believes “other issues for enhancing the activity of the U.N. Special Commission must be considered,” such as allowing Iraq to sell more of its oil to buy food and medicine.

Former Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev observed that “the chances of preventing an armed clash have increased lately.”

“Iraq has taken half a step back, and so has the United States, which does not seem interested in demonstrating its military might,” Kozyrev told the Interfax news agency.

But even as the Russians were hailing the results of their talks with Aziz, on Clinton’s orders the Pentagon dispatched 16 aircraft to give U.S. forces more range and punch in the Middle East. U.S. officials also began complaining of Iraqi air-defense moves that they said threatened American forces in the area.

Sent to join the about 300 U.S. planes already in the Gulf were six F-117 Stealth fighters, six B-52 bombers and four refueling planes. The radar-evading F-117s were used heavily in the Gulf War and carry 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs. The B-52s are equipped to each carry a 2,000-pound cruise missile that is more potent than the Tomahawk missile used by the Navy.

The B-52s, the first of such aircraft to be sent to the Gulf, are to arrive by the end of the week.

The Pentagon put an additional 30 aircraft on standby, including two B-1 bombers and several dozen F-15s and F-16s. They may be called up if the regional military commander, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, believes it necessary.

The U.S. will have at least 27,000 troops and two aircraft carriers in the area by the end of the week.

The six F-117 Stealth fighters were dispatched to Kuwait City airport from their home base at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. The six B-52 bombers are leaving Barksdale Air Force Base, La., for Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean that is equipped to handle long-range bombers.

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Times staff writers Elizabeth Shogren and Paul Richter in Washington and Robin Wright at the Nasir Bagh Refugee Camp in Pakistan contributed to this report.