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Show Page A6 THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, Saturday, September 1, 1990 Some lawmakers urge U.S. military action against Iraq - WASHINGTON Doubts (AP) about the ability of economic sanctions to force Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait have prompted recommendations from inside and outside the government for direct U.S. military action against Iraq, officials said Friday. President Bush's spokesman pub- licly dismissed such reports, though njilitary and other officials acknowledged that American forces still pouring into Saudi Arabia could switch quickly from defense to Jrffense if so ordered. Administration officials in Maine, with the president sard there was some pressure building; from allies and members of Kenne-buhkpo- rt, adding layers of red tape to the departure process. The Washington Times reported Friday that Saudi Arabia, Britain and Israel were urging President Bush to resolve the crisis with military force. Leaders in those countries reason that the alternative would be to countries of the Perleave sian Gulf at the mercy of Iraq's conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons once U.S. and other foreign forces leave the region, the newspaper said. Some U.S. officials agree with this position, the Times said. Bush has expressed skepticism about the possibility of a negotiated sure for a military strike as "uninformed speculation." As for calls by members of Congress for such action, he said, "We have a strategy in place based on the United Nations resolution and the sanctions." Meanwhile, there was little change in the status of the almost 3,000 American women and children who have been promised permission to leave Iraq and Kuwait but have not yet been allowed to do so. "The Iraqis insist on stringing this out and putting all of these innocent people through this cruel ordeal," said State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler. She said the Iraqis have been Congress to move militarily against Saddam Hussein. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, and did not further identify those supporting a military move. The officials said the pressure by no means constituted a consensus. They indicated that mainstream opinion within the administration and the Congress and among U.S. allies was to stay with the present policy of using economic sanctions to force Saddam to roll back. Publicly, the White House refused to comment on prospects for military action. While House spokesman Roman Popadiuk dismissed news reports suggesting growing internal pres U.N.-pass- ed oil-ri- settlement to the Persian Gulf confrontation and has said he is sticking to his position that the U.N. ties. "There's not going to be any war unless the Iraqis attack," Schwarzkopf told reporters late Friday af ter spending the day visiting American troops in northeast Saudi Arabia. Still, military commanders in the area say the capability of attacking Iraq is there and growing by the day as more forces arrive. economic embargo is. the best means of forcing an Iraqi retreat. Sen. Richard Lugar, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has urged military action against Iraq. But among lawmakers who left for the Persian misGulf Friday on a sion, none advocated an attack in comments to reporters. fact-findi- Bush dispatched forces to U.S. the region three weeks ago, saying their mission was defensive. But Iraqi diplomats have noted that the The commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, ruled out the possibility that the United States might initiate hostili presence of Stealth bombers gives the United States an offensive capability. crisis management center gets its workers out of Kuwait AT&T If if X: While NEWARK, N.J. (AP) White House officials scrambled for t, T, ' : ' k. , - : 1, v h A Jl Ml . - information during the initial hours of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, AT&T's own crisis management center was plotting an escape for dozens of employees. An undisclosed number of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. employees were among a group of U.S. nationals working in Kuwait whose c. npanies had security measures in place for such a crisis. "Our security director was awakened about 3 o'clock in the morning by our people in a location in 1 '" ti ,v Kuwait City," AT&T spokesman Herb Linnen said Friday from Washington. The security director and his staff had the crisis center went into action in an hour, he said. Eighteen people have been staffing it around the clock ever since. At the direction of the crisis AP Laserphoto A camel strolls past two sentries from the 82nd Airborne in the Saudi Arabian desert Friday. center, carloads of company employees in Kuwait City formed a caravan within a week of the invasion, and confronted Iraqi tanks trek and soldiers on a through the desert to Saudi Arabia. The center, at an undisclosed location in northern New Jersey, is a converted conference room stocked with computers, maps, telephones and other communications equipment. AT&T's top management was looking out for their interests." AT&T officials were in contact with other companies, he said, including Chiquita Brands International in Cincinnati, Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh, and Boeing Co. in Seattle. 20-ho- ur City who were hearing our people in Kuwait reports of violence against people were nervous," Linnen said. "There were reports of violence and of rapes." A telephone line from Kuwait City to the crisis center was left open. Linnen would not say if workers from those companies joined the more than 20 AT&T employees who formed the first caravan. Spokesmen from Westinghouse and Chiquita said they could not comment on evacuation efforts or employees who may be in Kuwait or Iraq. Boeing spokesman Paul Binder said the company had no employees in Iraq and only two in Kuwait, who are sti1' Mieved to be there. "We kept the line open literally as a psychological lifeline to those individuals," Linnen said. "They wanted to have assurance that However, all three companies said they have procedures to take care of overseas employees when and if trouble erupts. "early Iraq prepares for food rationing that goes into effect today .NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - Nation- al, rationing takes effect Saturday in Iraq, and authorities have issued coupon books and set up centers to distribute food, sources in Baghdad said. But the Iraqi capital was feeling the squeeze. already ' ; Long lines snaked out of bakeries in Baghdad, residents said. Refugees fleeing Iraq earlier this week reported long queues outside food in smaller desert towns. shops ' Flour, rice, dried beans, grain, and powdered milk had dissapeared from shops, the Baghdad sources said, and meat vanished days ago. Pharmacy shelves were empty of medicines, and hospital officials spoke of dwindling supplies of anti biotics and anesthesia, said sources contacted by telephone from Nicosia. Iraq has two to four months stock of staple food, according to U.S. government and trade estimates. Some experts speculate t' at if the country tightens its belt, it could stretch its stocks to withstand a siege. Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh earlier this week reassured his countrymen via the government-controlle- d six-mon- media that Iraq had enough food to last a long time. He did not say how long. Rationing coupons issued in Iraq entitle each person to a monthly allocation of 13 pounds of flour, 3.3 pounds of rice, 2.2 pounds of sugar, 3.5 ounces of tea, 1.1 pounds of oil, 17 ounces of detergent and one bar of soap. Children under a year old receive three tins of powdered milk each month, but older children receive none. Fresh fruit and vegetables from summer crops remained plentiful, sources said. "It's also pretty well accepted that Iraqis store more basic foods than would be expected in other countries, and no one has any idea what people have at home," said Andrew Bellingham, a farm trade analyst with World Perspectives Inc., in Washington D.C. "It's a natural tendency to keep extra stock in any situation of such as Iraqis faced instability and you also during the gulf war have had the Iraqi government encouraging it," he said in a telephone interview. President Saddam Hussein announced 10 days after the invasion of Kuwait that the country would have to prepare for austerity. Since then, hoarding and profiteering have been punishable by death. Iraqi people have been better fed in recent years than their neighbors in Turkey, Syria, Iran and elsewhere. U.S. officials estimate that the average Iraqi consumes 3,300 calories each day and could cut back age stemming from the Aug. 6 U.N. trade embargo that has cut off the export of oil, Iraq's main source of revenue. Experts have said the oil embargo is a more powerful weapon than the embargo of food. Much of the food consumed by Iraq's 17 million people, especially rice and flour, was purchased from the United States and has not yet been paid for. Baghdad still owes the United States about $2 billion for food delivered before the invasion of Kuwait. Last year, Iraq spent $2.9 billion importing about 75 percent of its food from the United States, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. without health difficulties to the 0 same consumed by people in nearby countries. Consumption in Iraq is above the top end of the range for a healthy diet recommended by U.S. dieticians. As final preparations were under way to begin rationing, Laq on Friday sought to barter oil for food. It offered an undetermined amount of crude oil in return for 50,000 metric tons of sugar, officials in Manila said. The offer was under study by the Philippines, which relied heavily on Iraq and Kuwait far its oil needs. Baghdad's offer to barter was evidence of a worsening cash short 2,500-2,90- Gulf crisis forging new world of cooperation - : WASHINGTON President (AP) Bush calls it "the shape of the world." To a degree for generations, the nations of the world are working together ii) the interest of peace, not only in the Persian Gulf but in bloodstained Cambodia as well. for the moment, ; Gone, at least ire the superpower rivalries that often blocked cooperation to settle regional conflicts during the post World War II era that came to be tagged the "Cold War." the new world Bush talks about is sure to contain its own chills and frustrations for the United States. For example, a world in which international cooperation is the norm is one in which unilateral action is condemned. How much has the world changed in the nine months since Bush's unilateral decision to remove Manuel Antonio Noriega from power in -- post-postw- ar un-bib- Panama? Or since Ronald Reagan's decision to invade Grenada? Or Leonid Brezhnev's decision to send Soviet troops into Afghanistan? Does the swift mobilizing of an international force to block Saddam Hussein give reason to think prospects are heightened for an international effort to finallv bring peace to the Middle East? "What is at stake here is truly significant," Bush said Thursday. ;He cited "the dependability of America's commitments to its friends and allies, the shape of the world, opposition to aggression, the potential domination of the energy resources that are crucial to the entire world." He spoke in the context of announcing that he was asking Japan, post-postw- ar News Analysis Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and free Kuwait for financial and energy resources to support the Persian Gulf mobilization. That request opens another area of international involvement. Presumably, nations that agree to pay part of the cost will also want a role in the decision making. At this time of widespread agreement on how to proceed in response to the Iraqi aggression, that wouldn't seem much of a problem. But suppose Saddam Hussein is able to hold out, resist the blockade and keep his troops in Kuwait indefinitely? Will the world's unanimity continue? Should Iraq yield to international pressure and withdraw from Kuwait, will there be unanimity on the Persian shape of the Gulf? Would a return to the status quo, a Kuwait governed by the Emir and his family, be acceptable to all nations? There also is the question of whether an Iraqi withdrawal would now be enough. Influential members of Congress, such as Sen. a senior Richard Lugar, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are urging Bush to hold out for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. They argue that as long as he is in control of Iraq, it would only be a matter of time before he struck again. More broadly, any attempt to look ahead to the post-Col- d War world runs into the question of West Germany, post-invasi- apparently helpless, as Cambodia was ravaged by civil war and the savagery of the Khmer Rouge regime when thousands died in execution chambers and slave labor camps. whether the response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait will be the exception or the rule. After all, the Persian Gulf with its oil resources is a region so vital to so many of the world's industrial nations that it provided unique incentive for governments to set aside interests that divide them and unite behind an effort to roll back the Iraqi aggression. return to power the Khmer Rouge may have provided enough incentive for the compromise that is leading to a United Nations role. 1 , . BACK-TO-SCHOOL- IN ft r tsr: Gulf and Cambodia both areas on which it was relatively easy to find international agreement on the need for action to halt further violence. The Persian m p t lI STYLE ! 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C 1 & ' See the professionals at Larry's Hair'm for that i J) 16 inch (r&(if Cot f NUMBER ONE WORLDWIDE bar OCil Mo frv x The leaders who now are cooper" 4 " ating need only look back on the r " response to the start of the Iran-Ira- q fif jg ' '4,' I ; war, to see a different sort of I ( ' response. There was no concerted effort to halt the fighting between two evenly matched nations widely viewed as pariahs. The only con- fSiNmtmmdm ...... AP Laserphoto cern during the years that war dragged on was over whether it PFC Preston Le Blanc of Beaumont, Texas, holds a letter from his would cause an interruption of oil mother Friday in the Saudi Arabian desert. shipments. - announcement leaves Cambodia still a long way from an end to ,a period in which hundreds of thousands of people have died, it does represent substantial progress toward an international solution. For years, the world stood by, GO A-- nf 52? The prospect of a While the 1 -- ( of Less than 24 hours after Bush cited with obvious satisfaction the number of nations cooperating with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf, the Vietnamese-installe- d government of Cambodia announced its willingness to accept a major U.N. role in moving that nation toward free elections. 1 j X Vol S hA ' Sj 1 1030 South State Street Provo - 373r rVs south nt I 3 740 i r-- n (pit p'p'y AJ. |
