As the American-led ground offensive in the First American-Iraqi got under way on Feb. 24, 1991, Saddam Hussein expressed his frustration to his Russian counterpart M. Gorbachev, reports The New York Times which got a part of declassified audio file of conversations by the President of Iraq, which found in the country in 2003.
"Hussein had dispatched his foreign minister to Moscow in an 11th-hour bid to head off a ground war. After prodding by Gorbachev, Hussein had offered to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 21 days. But the United States appeared to be moving ahead with its land campaign", says the article.
"The situation is now is getting worse", Hussein wrote a day before 24 February in an emotional letter to the Russian leader. "Our nation and army are confused. We are asking ourselves which one is more significant: the Soviet Union's proposal or the Americans' threats?"
Speaking to trusted aides, Hussein was less diplomatic, denouncing Gorbachev as a "scoundrel" who lacked the will or influence to stop Bush. "He tricked us", Hussein said. "I knew he would betray us!"
Only a small portion of the archive, stored in a digital form at the National Defense University, has been declassified and opened to outside researchers. It includes 2,300 hours of recorded meetings and millions of pages of documents.
On the 20th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm (the air campaign began on Jan. 17, 1991), three transcripts of Hussein's fateful decisions were released and provide new gripping details.
It turns out that Hussein was convinced that the United States lacked the resolve to wage a grinding ground war, even if the Americans suffered one casualty for every four Iraqi casualties, he boldly predicted, the United States would falter.
He lectured his aides that igniting Kuwait's oil fields to hinder the allied warplanes was a valid military tactic that would not enrage the world.
Along with a parallel archive of declassified transcripts at the G. Bush Presidential Library at Texas A & M University, the captured Iraqi records depict Gorbachev as eager to engineer a solution that would protect the Russian former Iraqi client and make the Russians an equal partner with the United States in international diplomacy, but unwilling to jeopardize his relations with the Bush administration.
Bush emerges as a leader who sought to mollify Gorbachev even as the United States got stuck to its demand for an unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
"It is your neighborhood, and some of them are your friends," Bush told Gorbachev in a phone call on Feb. 22, 1991. "We recognize Soviet interests in the area. I want to get our forces out of there as soon as possible. I know how the Iranians and others feel."
Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, arrived to Moscow on Feb. 21. Later that day, Gorbachev told Bush in a phone call that he sensed a "serious shift" in Iraqi position, according to a transcript in the Bush Library.
Iraq, Gorbachev said, was no longer demanding that resolution of the Gulf crisis be linked to other issues in the Middle East. And although the Iraqis had initially demanded that they be given six weeks to leave Kuwait, the Russian insisted that the schedule be shortened to 21 days. That timetable still fell short of Mr. Bush's demands that Hussein unconditionally removes his troops and pays reparations to Kuwait and that a plan be worked out to deal with the Iraqi poison gas, biological weapons and nuclear arms programs.
Gorbachev's diplomatic efforts were undermined on Feb. 22 when the Kuwaiti oil wells wre set on fire under the order of Hussein who he saw it as a defensive measure. These actions were described by Bush in his conversation with the Russian leader as a "scorched-earth policy" and a reason for not delaying a military intervention. Bush said it should take the Iraqis no more than seven days to pull out of Kuwait, and he issued them an ultimatum to take action before noon the following day.
On Feb. 23, just minutes before the noon deadline, Bush and the Russian leader spoke on phone. Gorbachev argued that a joint American-Soviet action through the United Nations would establish a model for dealing with other crises.
"George, let's keep cool", Gorbachev said. "Saddam wants to stall, but we are not simpletons". But Bush's patience had been exhausted: If the Iraqis intended to comply with the withdrawal demand, he said, it would need to happen "in the next few minutes".
On the morning of February 24, Aziz brought Hussein a disappointing response from Gorbachev. The Russian wrote that Bush did not agree with the Soviet proposal, and that if Hussein wanted to avoid a ground war, he should immediately issue a statement saying that Iraq would withdraw its forces within 9 to 10 days.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
