President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ended their one-day summit in Finland in disagreement about whether the Palestinian issue should be linked to the international effort to get Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.
The United Nations resolutions imposing an economic blockade against Iraq “should be implemented on their face without trying to tie it in to some other unresolved dispute,” Bush said Sunday during an internationally televised joint news conference with Gorbachev in Helsinki.
The U.S. president said that while he feels “strongly” that the Palestinian issue must be solved, it should not be linked to the Persian Gulf crisis. “Any effort to link them is an effort to dilute the resolutions of the United Nations,” he said.
But Gorbachev replied that “there is a link here, because failure to find a solution in the Middle East at large also has a bearing on the conflict.”
The Soviet leader said a solution for all Middle East problems is even more important than resolving the Gulf crisis. He said there is a need to “come up with decisions and to devise a system to devise guarantees that would ensure the interests of all peoples and the whole world community, because it is a matter of vital concern to all of us.”
The Soviet Union had earlier supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s proposal that an international conference be convened to deal with the Palestinian issue as well as the Gulf crisis.
Bush said Sunday that the U.S. position has been that “under certain circumstances, consideration of a conference of that nature would be acceptable,” but not one linking the Israeli-Arab conflict to the Gulf crisis.
TRYING TO IMPLEMENT RESOLUTION 242
The U.S. position has been that such a conference would be acceptable only if efforts to bring about direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians fell through. Israel has been adamantly opposed to such a conference.
When a Palestinian reporter asked Bush why he does not support U.N. resolutions aimed at bringing about an Israeli withdrawal from the territories with the same fervor that he supports resolutions against Iraq, the president replied that the United States has been “zealously trying to implement” U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which he said calls for Israel’s “withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries.”
The fact that this has not happened yet “does not mean that you sit idly by in the face of naked aggression against Kuwait,” he said.
Gorbachev and Bush issued a statement expressing their support for the U.N. resolutions imposing economic sanctions and an embargo against Iraq. When U.S. Secretary of States James Baker visited Egypt last week, President Hosni Mubarak emphasized the need for a unified position on this by the two superpowers.
But while Bush left open the use of military actions against Iraq, Gorbachev ruled out any military actions and said the solution can be found through political means.
However, the two leaders agreed to allow medicine and food to be sent to Iraq if the need arises, particularly to keep children from starving.
But Bush stressed that approval for food shipments would be made by the Security Council’s sanctions committee and that the food would be distributed by international agencies, “to see that the food gets where it should go.”
“I hope that nobody around the world interprets (that to mean) that now there should be wholesale food shipments to Iraq,” Bush added.
SOVIET ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The two leaders also agreed that there should be security arrangement put in place once Iraq leaves Kuwait. But it was not clear what this would involve.
Gorbachev suggested that he would like to see an Arab force. Bush said U.S. forces would not remain in the Gulf one day longer than necessary.
Gorbachev related that Bush had told him it had been U.S. policy for years to keep the Soviet Union out of the Middle East affairs and that now the policy was changing.
“It is very important for us to cooperate here in the Middle East,” Gorbachev said. “In today’s world no single country, however powerful, will be able to provide the leadership which formerly individual countries tried to provide.
National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft explained Sunday that the United States is now willing to cooperate with the Soviets in the Middle East, not only because of the change in character of U.S.-Soviet relations but also because the Soviet Union is “playing a very responsible role in this crisis.”
Appearing on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” Scowcroft said the U.S. policy now is to get Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to restore the legitimate government of Kuwait and obtain the release of American hostages in Iraq.
He said the present goal is not aimed at deposing Saddam Hussein or removing Iraq’s capability to build chemical and nuclear weapons.
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