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Monday, September 10. 1990/ University Daily Kansan
Persian Gulf Crisis
Hostages not stifling president
Bush learned from predecessors
By George Gedda
Associated Press writer
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State James A. Baker III issued a comprehensive statement on the Persian Gulf crisis last week that barely mentioned U.S. hostages in Kuwait and Iran.
In a curious way, Baker was speaking volumes about Bush administration policy on the issue: hostages are not going to be an obsession of this administration, in contrast with its predecessors.
Hostage crises produced the darkest hours for the last two presidents. Of Ronald Reagan's eight years in office, none was more than trying to the late 1980s-87 period when his efforts to obtain the release of the U.S. hostages in Lebanon degenerated into the Iran-Contra affair.
President Bush and Baker, both top lieutenants of Reagan, had bird's eye views of the political costs of the Iraq war. The president eagerly cangess to get the hostages home.
And memories are still fresh of how President Carter was virtually chained to the White House for months on end in 1979-80, trying to
devise a strategy for liberating the 52 U.S. hostages in Iran. In his re-election bid, Carter carried six states.
Efforts for freedom
Some might say the Bush administration is being cold-hearted in not making the Americans in Kuwait and Iraq its highest priority. After all, there are about 50 times more Americans held on Saddam Hussein's turf than there were in Tehran a decade ago.
But that ignores the efforts the administration has made on behalf of the hostages, many of which have received little attention. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq makes daily appeals to the Iraq Foreign Ministry for release of the hostages. The main reason for the persistence of U.S. Embassy personnel in defiance of Iraq orders is so that U.S. diplomats there can try to help the 2,000 or so Americans trapped in Kuwait.
There are also tales of U.S. diplomats loitering sometimes for days on end at the afghan border with Pakistan, who have awaited the possibility that a stray
American in need of assistance might turn up. When an American appeared at the Saudi border the other day, she was received by a lonesome U.S. diplomat who had been staked out for eight days
Devaluing the hostages
But there is a distinct do-it-all differently-from-Carter-and-Reagan image being projected by the administration concerning this hostile crisis.
News Analysis
Bush refuses to allow the dust-up to imprison him in the White House; he spent much of August frolloking at his Maine vacation retreat. Baker has spent part of the crisis at his Wyoming ranch, receiving from a London newspaper the sobriquet "the invisible man."
The families of some hostages object to what they regard as the cavaler attitude of Bush and Baker toward the captives.
"If it was the president's son, he would not go on vacation," said Florence Cumberton, wife of a former Texas governor, to his Texas home last week.
The administration is operating under the assumption that the best way to obtain freedom for the hostages is to devalue them, make their captors believe they will gain nothing by continuing to hold them.
Bush said last week he would not be deterred from taking military action by Iraqi threats to the hostages in Iraq and has asked the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"We stand at a critical juncture in our history," Baker said, calling the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait "one of the defining moments of a new era."
Decisive action, he said, is required to confront a "dictator who acting alone and unchallenged could strangle the global economic order, determining by flat whether we all fear the darkness of a depression.
Baker's between the lines message is that this worst-case scenario could come about if the fate of the hostages — and not national security interests — becomes the issue that drives U.S. policy.
> George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
1 Djibouti
2 United Arab Emirates
3 Quatar
4 Lebanon
KANSAN
By Laurinda Kevs
Associated Press writer
HELSINKI, Finland — Hightech Finland, a model of efficiency and electronic knowhow, was an ideal choice to stage a complicated superpower summit on a week's notice.
"There wasn't much time ... but we can handle it," Finland's President Mauno Kovisto said before the meeting between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
"We have had a lot of big events — not as big as this of course — so we were confident we would be able to build this in such a short period," Christer Hagglund, who supervised the project, phones, electric typewriters, computer terminals and transmission facilities for 2,160 journalists from
around the world.
The Finnish company Nokia produces 14 percent of the world's cellular phones, the largest share of any company in the world.
Finnish technology has also produced thermal suits which protect humans at sub-zero temperatures; an artificial sweetener, Xylitol, an antiviral protein, interferon, and a five-year contraceptive coil without the adverse side effects of other intrauterine devices.
At least 17 percent of the government's budget was allocated to education, science research and culture. Including funds from private industry, more than half of all government research money goes to technology.
Sixty percent of all working icebreakers were made in Finland.
U.S. pilots wait for Saudi orders
The Associated Press
OVER SAUDI ARABIA — U.S. fighter pilots have been ordered, except in the most threatening situations, to wait for a go-ahead from Saudi commanders before firing at U.S. air force U.S. Air Force officers said yesterday.
The restrained rules of engagement apply even in some cases in which Iraq jets are deemed hostile.
The rules are designed to significantly cut the risk of a U.S. pilot firing the first shot in a war with
Iraq, which could upset the volatile regional politics that now have most Arab nations behind the United States and Saudi Arabia, the officials said.
"The one thing we don't want to do is start a war by someone making a mistake," said Air Force Col. Tom Bliss, commander of U.S. Airborne Warning and Control System (AACS) operations in the Middle East.
Bliss said that if an AWACS plane detected a potentially hostile Iraqi
aircraft, it would relay the information to the command post in Saudi Arabia's eastern province. There, but an American is always on duty.
It would be up to the Saudi's to formally designate the aircraft hostile and in most cases to decide whether to open fire. Bliss said.
However, the Saudis do not have permission to order U.S. forces to attack Iraqi forces.
Under the rules, the Saudis can tell U.S. fighters to make a risky visual
identification of Iraqi jets
Exceptions to these rules could occur if communication between the pilots and the Saudis on the ground were lost, or if an individual pilot determined his aircraft to be in imminent danger. Bliss said.
If communication lost, crew chiefs aboard the AWACS planes would work with their weapons officers and could make the decision to Iraqi jets provided certain criteria were met. Air Force officers said.
Conventional forces gain importance in budget
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — America's buildup in the Persian Gulf has given added impetus to proponents of a war. War defense budget that favors disaffectioned conventional weapons over sophisticated strategic hardware.
Services Committee drew up the plan.
But some lawmakers said, all the same, that the measure was geared to equiping U.S. forces for a desert war rather than a European showdown.
Finland, between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev drove home what had already been seen as a diminished Soviet threat. Both leaders expressed confidence that the two superpowers could agree on a treaty to slash nuclear arms by the end of the year.
The summit meeting in Helsinki.
Deterring Iraqi aggression and the cost of dong so were not a direct consideration when the House Armed
The House of Representatives takes up the fiscal 1991 defense bill today, working from a $233 billion budget to help keep the invasion of Kuwait launched.
HAWK TRACY says: "I'm on my way!"
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