Diplomacy: No Quick Fixes in Sight

By Lisa Beyer

Wearing a Saddam Hussein T shirt in a country recently invaded and plundered by the Iraqi leader's forces is a provocative thing to do. But is it worthy of a 15-year jail term followed by deportation? That was the punishment a Kuwaiti court handed last week to an Iraqi man accused of that offense. Later, responding to international outrage over the sentence, the Kuwaiti government claimed that the man had also worked for Iraqi intelligence. But by that time the authorities had precious little credibility as they tried to defend their brand of justice. Among 10 people tried last week for collaboration, some saw their lawyers for the first time in court. No witnesses were called, no evidence was produced, and there was no right of appeal.

Those in the dock were not the only ones squirming through the kangaroo sessions. The Bush Administration was chafing too, embarrassed by the brutish behavior of a regime that it had risked so much to restore to power. Embracing a government as undemocratic as Kuwait's was awkward from the outset, but expectations were high that the liberated country would march briskly toward liberalization. Instead, the ruling band of brothers and cousins that runs the country seems to have settled comfortably into its old habits.

In other ways, too, Washington's plans to help recast the Middle East order have been frustrated. Iraq remains a source of tension. Arab-Israeli peace efforts are foundering. And the Arab states that pulled together against Saddam have returned to quibbling among themselves. For all the brilliant clarity of the allies' military victory, the peace has produced a murky landscape. Among the reasons:

The sanctions dilemma. The Administration, exasperated by Saddam's continued hold on power, refuses to remove economic sanctions against Iraq until Saddam is ousted. But accounts coming out of Iraq of the deprivations suffered by the population have raised questions about the appropriateness of that policy. A Harvard University medical team reported last week that health-care problems in the country were "desperate" and worsening. The group predicted that at least 170,000 children will die this year because of problems brought on by the war.

Moral issues aside, there is considerable doubt whether a continued embargo will speed Saddam's downfall. The Administration hopes that popular resentment of the hardships Iraqis face will help provoke a coup d'etat. That calculation may well prove flawed. Would-be plotters, whether in the military or in the government, are insulated from these travails because of their privileged access to anything in short supply. Besides, the resentment could be directed at the authors of the embargo instead of toward Saddam.

Kurdistan woes. When Bush first deployed U.S. troops to Iraq's north to establish a safe haven for Kurdish refugees who had fled from Saddam's forces, he swore it would be a very short posting. Five weeks later, the 12,000 soldiers remain in place, with no return date in the offing. Washington had hoped that U.N. police officers now arriving in Kurdistan would replace U.S. and European troops. But the U.N. cops are lightly armed, and the Kurds have little confidence in them. To coax the last 100,000 refugees still camping in Iraq's northern mountains back down to their homes in Dahuk, which lies just south of the safe-haven zone, the U.S. and its allies last week reluctantly began to dispatch a small military force to extend protection to the city.

Obstacle to liberalization. The closest President Bush came to publicly criticizing Kuwait for denying due process to accused collaborators was to say last week that the government should "extend the fair trial to everybody." U.S. officials insist that they regularly raise human-rights complaints with Kuwaiti officials in private. But Washington feels it can only go so far in pressuring the Kuwaitis to reform their society -- particularly when it comes to holding elections, which the Emir has promised in 1992. The Saudis, Washington's most important Arab allies, are highly allergic to any agitation for elections. "We're under a lot of pressure from the Saudis not to push Kuwait too hard," says a well-placed staff member on Capitol Hill.

Arab-Israeli peace. Efforts to convene a peace conference that would begin direct negotiations between Israel and its Arab enemies remain deadlocked because of disagreements between Syria and the Jewish state over the format for talks. Secretary of State James Baker said last week that he saw an even bigger impediment to the peace process in Israel's determination to continue building settlements in occupied Arab lands. "Nothing has made my job of trying to find Arab and Palestinian partners for ((talks with)) Israel more difficult," Baker told Congress in an unusually harsh blast at the U.S. ally.

Gulf security. If the gulf states learned anything from Saddam's cakewalk into Kuwait, it was that they must find better ways to defend themselves. What appeared to be a consensus on how to achieve that, however, has since disintegrated. Two weeks ago, Egypt began withdrawing the 40,000 troops it had dispatched to the gulf, apparently lighting a match to March's Damascus Declaration, under which Egyptian and Syrian forces were to help protect the gulf states in exchange for economic aid. Syria's 19,000 troops are also quietly decamping. It is unclear which side ordered those departures and why, but many diplomats believe that the gulf states are sure the U.S. will again rush to their defense if needed and thus see no need to pay their Arab neighbors, whom they see as less trustworthy, to stand guard.

On the question of how to institutionalize their alliances with the U.S., however, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia hold different views -- neither of which coincides with Washington's. Kuwait desperately wants the U.S. to leave behind a permanent force. That is unacceptable to the Bush Administration, which repeatedly pledged during the gulf buildup that the deployment would be temporary. The Saudis are concerned about appearing to be American lackeys and want their military ties with the U.S. to be invisible. Senior Saudi officials have even expressed misgivings at a Washington proposal to leave U.S. tanks and other equipment behind in Saudi Arabia.

Disappointment over the lack of rapid progress toward a collective-security system -- or for that matter toward any of Washington's Middle East policy goals -- is rooted in part in the unrealistically high hopes that were raised by the war's decisive outcome. Says Shireen Hunter, a Middle East expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies: "The impression was created that we could write our own ticket, and that was bad."

Bush himself created much of that illusion with his constant talk of a new world order. Like the rest of the country, his Administration has since been sobered by the reality that things do not change so rapidly in the Middle East.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 500 American adults taken for TIME/CNN on May 8 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 4.5%. "Not sures" omitted.

CAPTION: Given the current events in Iraq, how successful was the war with Iraq?

Should the U.S. maintain a larger military presence in the Middle East than before the war in order to protect friendly nations and safeguard vital U.S. interests, such as oil?

Should the U.S. continue to give top priority to maintaining Israel's strength and security even if Israel rejects U.S. proposals for resolving the Arab- Israeli conflict?

With reporting by Michael Duffy and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Lara Marlowe/Damascus