
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991                   TAG: 9102160072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JULIA MALONE COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

TV PUSHES ADMINISTRATION INTO SPEEDY DIPLOMACY

Television, which already has turned war into an instant video spectacle, is now forcing diplomacy to be conducted at the speed of light. And President Bush and his aides must sometimes scramble to catch up.

Bush was in the residential quarters of the White House early Friday morning when he first heard that Iraq was floating a peace offer. Like millions of other Americans, the president found out from a television report.

Immediately he and his top aides swung into action.

Before the morning TV shows signed off, before even his advisers could study the complete statement aired on Iraqi radio, the president dispatched his spokesman Marlin Fitzwater to react to it.

"We have not yet examined a full official text," began Fitzwater, but he voiced skepticism, if not outright rejection, of the plan. It was only after making his remarks that Fitzwater returned to his office and was handed a complete copy of the Iraqi statement.

A little more than an hour later, senior White House officials had pored over the details of Baghdad's offer and Bush had touched base with members of the coalition fighting against Iraq. By then the president had already prepared the final verdict on the plan. It was a "cruel hoax," he declared in a televised appearance at 10 a.m.

Such media-led diplomacy brings possible drawbacks, according to some experts. An administration official has privately bemoaned the age of telediplomacy as encouraging leaders to become "overemotional and over-reacting."

And Richard Noyes, an analyst at the private Center for Media and Public Policy in Washington warned, "If they're rushing and they make missteps so they can keep to the TV agenda, that would cause concern."

However, Noyes added that Bush appeared to avoid that trap as he responded to the Iraqi peace initiative Friday morning. He said Bush's remarks were "tailored to keeping the coalition together" even as they dampened hopes for peace and laid the blame for war on the shoulders of Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein.

Speedy reaction has been the hallmark of the month-long Persian Gulf conflict, during which U.S. officials have been highly sensitive to any TV report that might damage America's world image in conducting the war.

Earlier this week, the Bush administration sought to counter the worldwide sympathy sparked by televised scenes of charred bodies being pulled out of an Iraqi air raid bunker. Within minutes of the broadcasts, military officials and the president's spokesman mobilized to proclaim that the site had been a secret Iraqi military command center.

Last month, in another reaction to TV pictures, Fitzwater vehemently attacked a Cable News Network report that allied bombers had attacked a Baghdad infant formula factory. It was actually a biological weapons factory, Fitzwater said.

So far, the administration's haste to react has not caused problems, said Noyes. But he added that Bush has also gotten a boost from the mood of the American public.

"I think the nation's inclination is that it distrusts Saddam Hussein and so the public is more willing to believe Bush's line," he said.

by CNB