[News] Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids

[claude]

December 23, 2003

Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 
1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to 
persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties 
with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly 
declassified documents show.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by 
Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent 
move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle 
and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the 
Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.

During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat 
planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was 
widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers 
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian 
deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.

The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi 
government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the 
eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use 
of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration 
officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for 
ousting Mr. Hussein.

The documents, which were released as part of a declassification project by 
the National Security Archive, and are available on the Web at 
www.nsarchive.org, provide details of the instructions given to Mr. 
Rumsfeld on his second trip to Iraq in four months. The notes of Mr. 
Rumsfeld's encounter with Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, remain 
classified, but officials acknowledged that it would be unusual if Mr. 
Rumsfeld did not carry out the instructions.

Since the release of the documents, he has told members of his inner circle 
at the Pentagon that he does not recall whether he had read, or even had 
received, the State Department memo, Defense Department officials said.

One official noted that the documents reflected the State Department's 
thinking on Iraq, but did not indicate Mr. Rumsfeld's planning for his 
meeting with Mr. Hussein nor his comments on the meeting after its conclusion.

Mr. Rumsfeld's trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his first visit, in 
late December 1983, he had a cordial meeting with Mr. Hussein, and 
photographs and a report of that encounter have been widely published.

In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported 
that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting. 
"The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," 
the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a 
person."

When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld told CNN 
that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But when 
presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of 
that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue in a 
meeting with Mr. Aziz.

Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that there 
was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on his 
missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.

By early 1984, events threatened to upset the American-Iraqi relationship. 
After pleading for a year for international action against the chemical 
warfare, Iran had finally persuaded the United Nations to criticize the use 
of chemical weapons, albeit in vague terms.

Pressure mounted on the Reagan administration, which had already verified 
Iraq's "almost daily" use of the weapons against Iran and against Kurdish 
rebels, documents show. In February, Iraq warned Iranian "invaders" that 
"for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating 
it." Within weeks, the American authorities intercepted precursor chemicals 
that were bound for Iraq. Finally, on March 5, the United States issued a 
public condemnation of Iraq.

But days later, Mr. Shultz and his deputy met with an Iraqi diplomat, Ismet 
Kittani, to soften the blow. The American relationship with Iraq was too 
important involving business interests, Middle East diplomacy and a shared 
determination to thwart Iran to sacrifice. Mr. Kittani left the meeting 
"unpersuaded," documents show.

Mr. Shultz then turned to Mr. Rumsfeld. In a March 24 briefing document, 
Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to present America's bottom line. At first, the memo 
recapitulated Mr. Shultz's message to Mr. Kittani, saying it "clarified 
that our CW [chemical weapons] condemnation was made strictly out of our 
strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it 
occurs." The American officials had "emphasized that our interests in 1) 
preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve bilateral 
relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's choosing, remain undiminished," it 
said.

Then came the instructions for Mr. Rumsfeld: "This message bears 
reinforcing during your discussions."

The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling war with Iran was 
rife with such ambiguities. Though the United States was outwardly neutral, 
it tilted toward Iraq and even monitored talks toward the sale of military 
equipment by private American contractors.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said: 
"Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's, and it didn't make any 
difference to U.S. policy."

Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying the price for 
earlier indulgence. "The embrace of Saddam in the 1980's and what it 
emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look 
closely at all our murky alliances," he said. "Shaking hands with dictators 
today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."

Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>Copyright 2003 
<http://www.nytco.com/>The New York Times Company




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