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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 27, 1991                   TAG: 9102270250
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

ROUT OF IRAQ BELIEVED ONLY WAY TO END THREAT

The Bush administration is not making it easy for Iraq to end the war because it believes that only unconditional surrender can insure America's aims of eliminating Iraq as a mili tary threat and permanently discrediting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Achieving these objectives, administration officials said Tuesday, is essential both to speed the withdrawal of most of the 537,000 American troops in the gulf, and to make sure they will not have to come back to fight again some day. These are the top priorities of the White House as it oversees what it hopes will be the conclusion of its war effort.

The more discredited Saddam is as a political leader after the war, and the more devastated is his army, "the sooner we will get out of there and the less likely we will have to come back anytime soon," a senior administration official said.

The unconditional surrender of Iraqi forces, preferably in the form of a chaotic rout of men fleeing without their weapons, serves these aims in a number of ways, officials argue.

First, it would deprive Saddam of any chance to say he stood up to the allied coalition and was able to withdraw on his terms. Some American officials still recall the dignified retreat they helped arrange for Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, allowing him to leave Beirut in the summer of 1982, with his men firing guns in the air and flashing victory signs as they drove out through Israeli cease-fire lines.

Administration officials have no desire to see Iraqi soldiers accorded such treatment through American lines. Instead, they want Saddam to be embarrassed, both by the way his soldiers leave Kuwait and by forcing him to personally accept American cease-fire terms.

Second, officials acknowledge they are hoping the masses of retreating Iraqi soldiers, returning all at once, will pose an enormous burden on the Iraqi state. They envision hundreds of thousands of soldiers demanding food, clothing and jobs from Saddam's government.

In this situation, the officials say they do not really want to capture more Iraqi soldiers, and that instead of shifting additional captives to be fed in Saudi Arabian camps, they would prefer that Iraqi troops lay down their arms, walk home and start complaining.

"We want this thing to end in a way that will leave Saddam unmistakably diminished," a senior administration official said. "That will have its own internal logic. We want Iraqis to look around after this war and ask: `What has he done to us, and for what?' This also has lessons and implications for the rest of the region. When you lose, you not only have to give back what you took, but you look like a loser, too."

Administration officials say that having hundreds of thousands of soldiers straggle home provides still another benefit: Their presence will make it more difficult for Saddam to control information about how the war ended.

Finally, an interagency group headed by Bush's deputy national security adviser, Robert Gates, has almost completed a series of postwar policy options for Bush.

Officials familiar with the papers say their immediate focus is how to get the American troops swiftly out of Iraq and Kuwait, with a transition period starting immediately after the fighting stops.

But for the Americans to leave quickly, the military threat to Kuwait from Iraq has to be sharply diminished and Saddam either crippled or toppled, American officials say.

by CNB