Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 28, 1991 TAG: 9102280401
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Iraq late Wednesday promised the United Nations it would honor all 12 Security Council resolutions on the Gulf War, as demanded by the United States and its allies, diplomats said.
They said the latest letter addressed to the Security Council and Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar made clear that Baghdad will honor all the resolutions.
Yemen's Ambassador Abdalla Saleh Ashtal, who saw the original letter in Arabic, said, "It had in it the acceptance of Iraq of resolutions of the Security Council pertaining to the gulf crisis."
There was no official confirmation from Baghdad that Iraq had accepted the resolutions.
Al-Ashtal said the Security Council would meet this morning to discuss the Gulf War.
America's top armored divisions had dealt heavy blows to Iraqi forces in the desert Wednesday before the president declared the war won after 100 hours of ground fighting.
Bush said U.S. and allied troops would suspend fighting at midnight Wednesday. A permanent cease-fire will take hold once Iraq ends all hostilities, frees all prisoners of war and Kuwaiti captives, returns the remains of war dead and gives the allies the location of all land and sea mines it had laid, he said.
Moreover, Bush said Baghdad must bow to all the Security Council demands, which include a formal rescinding of the annexation of Kuwait and "acceptance in principal of Iraq's responsibility to pay compensation for the loss, damage and injury its aggression has caused."
"This war is now behind us," Bush said. "Ahead of us is the task of achieving a potentially historic peace" in the Middle East.
Secretary of State James Baker will work with the United Nations Security Council on "the necessary arrangements for this war to be ended" formally, said Bush. He said Baker would go to the Middle East next week to begin consultations.
Once again, Bush invited Iraqis to throw Saddam out. He said the United States and its allies "fought this war only as a last resort and look forward to the day when Iraq is led by people prepared to live in peace with their neighbors."
Allied forces devastated more than 40 of 42 Iraqi divisions. The surviving remnants were being allowed to return home after the cease-fire started this morning, a senior U.S. military source said.
At the cease-fire deadline, 8 a.m. in the gulf region, allied forces were ordered to go into defensive positions, the source said, speaking on condition he not be identified.
The allied troops carried out offensive operations until the deadline, backed by continued air strikes against escape routes and strategic targets, the source said.
At least 80,000 Iraqi troops have been taken prisoner since allied forces crossed into Iraq and Kuwait, including about 40 who initially surrendered to a pilotless Marine drone reconaissance aircraft and were photographed by its camera, the source said.
At deadline time, the fighting was concentrated in three areas: two in northern Kuwait where demoralized Iraqi troops were trying to head home and one in southern Iraq against remnants of Saddam's best-trained Republican Guard units, the source said.
The U.S. commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, said Wednesday night that allied forces had "closed the gate" for Iraqi troops to escape north with their tanks and artillery. But that changed after the cease-fire started.
"At 8 a.m., if they come up to U.S. positions and do not attack U.S. positions, then our policy now is to allow them to pass with their weapons," the source said.
"The gate is open at 8 a.m., but I'm telling you there's not going to be too much going through the gate," said the source.
While tank battles raged Wednesday on the outskirts of Basra in southeastern Iraq, far to the northwest, troopers of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division stood less than 100 miles from Baghdad, in the deepest penetration yet into Iraq. The top U.S. commander disavowed any intention of moving on the Iraqi capital, however.
In liberated Kuwait City, joyous residents flocked to the streets to cheer their flag and throng triumphant U.S. and Saudi troops. "Thank you, America!" they shouted.
Wednesday's tank battle in Iraq's Southern Desert, west of Basra, was the biggest armor engagement since World War II.
By late Wednesday in Washington, senior U.S. military officials were claiming victory, and one said "mopping-up" operations might be completed by morning.
For whatever Iraqi units pulled back to Basra, escape routes were limited. The city is hemmed in by rivers on two sides and by Desert Storm troops elsewhere.
North of Basra, the Iraqis hurriedly threw pontoon bridges across the Euphrates River, a U.S. military official reported. But tanks retreating north across the spans would be vulnerable to air attack. Permanent bridges across the river were destroyed in the air war.
The eastward armored push by the VII Corps divisions was scoring success after success.
U.S. troops seized an airfield outside the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, on the Euphrates, solidifying the alliance force's rear and enabling them to leap-frog still deeper into the heart of Iraq if necessary.
Iraqi civilians and militiamen from Nasiriyah confronted the invaders, an Iraqi military spokesman said in Baghdad. But there was no further information on that clash.
The Iraqis, trying to stave off further disaster, had earlier declared they would accept only the Security Council resolutions making Iraq liable for war damages and guaranteeing Kuwait's sovereignty - in exchange for a cease-fire.
But the Security Council had rejected that offer Wednesday, saying Baghdad must agree to all 12 resolutions before a cease-fire could be set.
Although the U.N. mandate authorizing the war specified the objective of driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait, the allies have clearly pursued a second objective as well: reducing the Iraqi military.
Schwarzkopf reiterated this Wednesday: "Our intention was purely to eject the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to destroy the military power that had come in here."
He also provided a measure of the offensive's success, saying at least 3,000 of 4,200 Iraqi tanks deployed to the Kuwait theater were destroyed in the 38-day Desert Storm air campaign and four days of ground war.
In addition, Schwarzkopf updated the American casualty count: 79 killed, including 28 in the ground campaign, and 213 wounded.
At least 47 allied servicemen have been killed. Nine of them were Britons killed when a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt Warthog plane mistakenly attacked two British infantry carriers.
Iraq, its troops under furious air and ground assault, had announced early Tuesday it was abandoning Kuwait. By Tuesday afternoon, the Iraqis had pulled out of Kuwait City, and by Wednesday the Kuwaiti flag was flying again over the capital, for the first time since the Iraqi invasion last Aug. 2.
Armed civilians there hunted down what were said to be fewer than 100 Iraqi soldiers - potential snipers - hiding out.
Just west of the city, U.S. Marines defeated the Iraqis in a major tank battle at Kuwait International Airport, ending the last organized resistance in Kuwait.
Iraqi troops clogging the 75-mile road north to Basra had come under heavy fire from U.S. warplanes, American commanders reported. An Iraqi military spokesman, on Baghdad radio, denounced the allied attacks on retreating forces as "cowardly."
It could not be determined how many of the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait made it north to the Basra area or beyond.
Schwarzkopf said more than 50,000 Iraqis had been taken prisoner. Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops are believed to have been killed or wounded in the air and ground campaigns. Schwarzkopf said the command would not produce any Iraqi death count.
by CNB