Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260309
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From the Los Angeles Times/ and The Associated Press
DATELINE: RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Long
The White House turned a cold shoulder to the withdrawal announcement broadcast over Baghdad Radio.
"The war goes on," said President Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater.
The White House demanded that Saddam "personally and publicly" agree to an unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait and payment of war damages to stop the fighting in the Persian Gulf.
"We continue to prosecute the war," Fitzwater said.
The White House invited Iraqi troops to lay down their arms.
"We will not attack unarmed soldiers in retreat. But we will consider retreating combat units as a movement of war," Fitzwater said.
Fitzwater said the administration did not know if a broadcast order from Saddam for his forces to withdraw was genuine. "We hope it's true. We want him to get out," he said. He noted that Saddam had ordered his troops to fight on their way out.
Baghdad Radio interrupted its programs at 1:30 a.m. today Iraqi time with the surprise announcement that the Iraqi leadership had issued orders to its troops "for an organized withdrawal to the position in which they were before the first of August 1990."
The broadcast, monitored in Amman, Jordan, said that withdrawing to those positions constituted "practical compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 660."
Less than an hour before the Baghdad Radio announcement, the Soviet Union told the Security Council that it had indications that Iraq was willing to comply with allied demands for a quick withdrawal from Kuwait.
But the council's president, the ambassador from Zimbabwe, said that Iraq's U.N. ambassador told him he had received no new instructions from Baghdad.
The Baghdad Radio report reached Washington while Bush was playing racquetball. Brent Scowcroft, the president's national security adviser, relayed it to him by telephone. The president returned to the White House, heading directly to his living quarters, rather than to the Oval Office.
One White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States and its allies had no more reason to look favorably on Saddam's plan than they did on Friday when they rejected a Soviet-Iraqi proposal for a three-week withdrawal, rather than the one-week pullout Bush demanded.
"The initial statement tying it to the Soviet proposal will make clear it's not an acceptable plan," the official said. "It wasn't on Friday. Why would it be now?" Besides, he added, "if they're interested in peace, they should approach it through some better forum than Baghdad Radio."
Reflecting concern that the Iraqis were trying to bail out of the battlefield with as much of their armor and artillery as possible, the official said: "Their motives are kind of suspect. Now that we've started the war, it's hard to see why we'd agree to it."
And, he said, the White House was confident that its partners in the anti-Iraq coalition would remain firmly opposed to allowing a peaceful withdrawal, after having joined the United States in putting troops in the field and risking the lives of their soldiers.
Fitzwater also made it clear that the administration has no interest in stepping back from any of the 12 U.N. resolutions calling for Iraq's withdrawal and guiding the conditions for a pullout.
The Iraqi broadcast followed the U.S. military's announcement that allied forces had destroyed scores of Iraqi tanks Monday in the first significant combat with the top-rated Republican Guard.
The sources said that in other action, U.S. Marine and Army battalions, backed by persistent air attacks, continued to press toward the Kuwaiti capital, where much of the city was reported in flames.
"Where we're meeting the enemy, we are defeating the enemy," Marine Brig. Gen. Richard Neal told a news briefing here. "We continue to achieve tremendous success."
In just 36 hours, Neal said, allied firepower destroyed more than 270 Iraqi tanks, including 35 of Iraq's top-line T-72s, the Soviet-made tank used by the Republican Guard.
Except for a devastating Iraqi Scud missile attack on a U.S. barracks building in Dhahran that killed 12, injured 25 and left another 40 missing, allied casualties remained relatively low, with four Americans and five Arabs reported killed in battle and another 21 wounded.
Four American aircraft were lost in the allied offensive on Monday - two AV-8 Harrier jump jets, one Apache helicopter and a a tank-killing A-10 "Warthog" jet.
In other developments:
Before the withdrawal announcement, Baghdad Radio said that Iraqi forces were inflicting heavy damage on the allies. "The defeated have abandoned their tanks, vehicles and equipment . . . and fled, tripping over their own feet while seeking a way to escape lethal Iraqi fire," the communique said.
In his first public appearance since the first night of the ground war, Bush said the allied offensive is "on course and on schedule," but he warned against premature optimism. "We have the initiative," the president said during a White House ceremony marking Black History Month.
"Kuwait will soon be free," Bush said. "There are battles yet to come and casualties to be borne, but make no mistake - we will prevail." Bush telephoned Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Operation Desert Storm, to offer his compliments.
by CNB