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> Can anyone confirm the bit about the US diplomat in 1990? It was > significant enough, I seem to remember, for various people to have to deny > it. >From Ramsey Clark's The Fire This Time (1994, Thunder's Mouth Press), pp.23-24: On July 25 - the day after the United States announced Gulf exercises with the UAE, while Iraqi troops were massing on the Kuwaiti border, and as General Schwarzkopf readied CENTCOM for war against Iraq - Saddam Hussein summoned Ambassador [April] Glaspie to his office in what seems to have been a final attempt to clarify Washington's position on his dispute with Kuwait. Glaspie assured him: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.... [Secretary of State] James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction." [83] She was expresssing official policy. On July 24, she had received a cable from the State Department explicitly directing her to reiterate that the United States had "no position" on "Arab-Arab" conflicts. [84] After the war, on March 21, 1991, Glaspie denied this version of her meeting with Hussein. She testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that she had repeatedly warned Hussein that the United States would not tolerate Iraq's use of violence to settle the dispute with Kuwait. She said Hussein had been too "stupid" to understand how the Unite States would react. [85] But in July 1991, Glaspie's cables to the State Department describing the meeting were finally released to the Senate. The cable showed that her Senate testimony was largely fabricated, and that the version released by Iraq was accurate. [86] On July 12, 1991 Committee Chairman Senator Claiborne Pell wrote an angry letter to Secretary of State James Baker demanding an explanation for the inconsistencies between Glaspie's testimony and the cable. Senator Alan Cranston charged that Glaspie had deliberately misled Congress about her role in the Gulf War. [the book continues with Assistant Secretary of State Kelly telling a Congressional committee on 31 July that the US had no treaty obligations to defend Kuwait] references: [83] "The Glaspie Transcript: Saddam meets the U.S. Ambassador," in The Gulf War Reader, Micah Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., (New York: Times Books, 1991), 130. AVAILABLE IN THE UL [84] Leslie H. Gelb, "Mr Bush's Fateful Blunder," New York Times, July 17, 1991, A21. [85] Thomas Friedman, "Envoy to Iraq, Faulted in Crisis, Says She Warned Hussein Sternly," New York Times, March 21, 1991. [86] "U.S. Messages on the July Meeting of Saddam Hussein and American Envoy," New York Times, July 13, 1991. See also Sydney Blumenthal's, "April's Bluff: The Secrets of Ms. Glaspie's Cable," The New Republic, August 5, 1991. The Fire This Time is out of print but Amazon.com will try to find it for you: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560250712/qid=915661346/sr=1-5/002-0570454-5415649 The dispute with Kuwait centred on slant-drilling into Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Clark describes Iraq's attempts to peacefully resolve this crisis. Colin Rowat King's College Cambridge CB2 1ST tel: +44 (0)468 056 984 England fax: +44 (0)1223 335 219 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html