Invasion Of Kuwait

LESS THAN THREE months after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Harvard University fellow Laurie Mylroie have teamed up to produce a paperback original called "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf" (Times Books, $5.95).Miller wrote the well-received "One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust," and Mylroie is author of a forthcoming book on gulf security.Pantheon Books, meanwhile, has issued a paperback edition of "Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam's Iraq" by Samir al-Khalil ($12.

Smoke-free zones boost public health Almost 16 years ago, my first son was born at Sinai Hospital. As we exited the hospital to our awaiting car, his first breaths of fresh air were actually a haze of cigarette smoke. I wrote the CEO of Sinai Hospital at the time to complain. I never heard back. When my second son was born years later, again at Sinai, the same scenario occurred. I applaud City Councilman Robert W. Curran's efforts and hope the City Council approves the bill to limit smoking outside hospitals ("Smoke-free zone," editorial, Nov. 30)

"Islamic Art and Patronage," an exhibit of 107 Islamic art objects from the Kuwait National Museum, will open as scheduled on Dec. 9 at the Walters Art Gallery, museum director Robert P. Bergman said yesterday.Mr. Bergman has had assurances from representatives (now in exile) of both the Kuwait National Museum and the Al-Sabah family, which owns the collection from which the pieces were selected, that the works would travel to the United States from Leningrad next month.And Joan Michaelson, administrator for the Trust for Museum Exhibitions in Washington, which is organizing the American tour, said the trust has been told by officials of the U.S. Treasury and State departments that the objects will be permitted to enter and leave the country without being seized by the government.

WASHINGTON - Now that our own Gary Cooper has declared High Noon and given Saddam Hussein 48 hours to get out of Dodge, it's being said that diplomacy has failed. Closer to the truth is that it was ambushed before it ran its course. Although the Iraqi dictator was destroying missiles deemed in violation of U.N. strictures and slowly yielding to other demands of the U.N. inspectors, the pace was intolerable to an impatient President Bush, who continued to talk of an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction not yet found.

WASHINGTON -- The United States' failure to pay $500 million in dues owed to the United Nations might undermine the world body's efforts to deal with the situation in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.Thomas R. Pickering said that the positive role played by the world body against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait made it necessary that the United States pay its dues. He said he was disturbed by the fact the United States was the United Nations' largest debtor, something he said had put in question "our leadership" in the Security Council.

WASHINGTON -- A House subcommittee chairman accused the Bush administration yesterday of attempting to cover up its sympathetic policy toward Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait.Representative Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn., leveled the charge after a report that a Commerce Department official was being dismissed for telling Congress that the administration approved exports of technology with military applications to Iraq over his objections.The report in Tuesday's editions of the New York Times quoted an official as saying that the office of White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu ordered that the Commerce official, Dennis E. Kloske, undersecretary for export administration, be removed from the payroll by June 1."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is threatening to veto any congressionally approved defense bill that hampers the Persian Gulf operation, which Defense Secretary Richard Cheney says could cost up to $15 billion in the next year.The Pentagon chief offered the cost estimate yesterday as the House weighed a $283 billion defense budget for fiscal year 1991, which begins Oct. 1, and searched for a way to defray the expense of the U.S. military buildup.A decision on using the defense bill as a vehicle for a down payment on Operation Desert Shield is contingent on White House and congressional negotiators agreeing on how to cut next year's federal deficit by $50 billion.

The leader of a large local community of Muslims said today his followers are loyal American citizens and urged against any anti-Muslim backlash as the Persian Gulf war intensifies.However, Ronald Shakir, imam of the Masjid Walter Omar at 4905 Liberty Heights Ave., added, "We don't advocate aggression, but if our children or anyone in our community is attacked, we would fight back with whatever means we could find. War begins when diplomacy ends."Shakir, at a news conference this morning at the mosque, said he knows of no incidents of harassment against local Muslims.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday he has assurances that Iran will back the United Nations' sanctions against Iraq and that concessions made to Iran by Saddam Hussein have hurt his standing with the Iraqi people."

WASHINGTON -- Three years after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States is still struggling with the military chicanery of Saddam Hussein and remains bedeviled by his political tenacity.In an ironic reminder of Mr. Hussein's survival skills, two Iraq surface-to-air missiles whizzed past American jets patrolling northern Iraq yesterday -- setting off the latest U.S.-Iraqi fracas just 16 days after the anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.The U.S. aircraft, which escaped harm, wasted no time retaliating.

Suddenly, things are looking up for President Clinton's foreign policy. After months of bumbling during which his world leadership was questioned at home and abroad, two dramatic triumphs seem to be unfolding in Haiti and Iraq. When these are combined with the quiet success this administration has attained in working for Israeli-Arab peace, staying out of the Balkans and building acceptable relations with Russia and China, Mr. Clinton has grounds for hoping both his record and reputation may be in a turn-around stage.

WASHINGTON -- Three years after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the United States is still struggling with the military chicanery of Saddam Hussein and remains bedeviled by his political tenacity.In an ironic reminder of Mr. Hussein's survival skills, two Iraq surface-to-air missiles whizzed past American jets patrolling northern Iraq yesterday -- setting off the latest U.S.-Iraqi fracas just 16 days after the anniversary of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.The U.S. aircraft, which escaped harm, wasted no time retaliating.

Paris -- It seems increasingly likely that what George Bush has considered his great triumph, the defeat of Iraq in the gulf war, will end in a serious threat to his re-election. One of several such threats, but the most bitter to accept.It is extremely hard now to see what can be done to make Saddam Hussein submit to the latest demands of Washington and the U.N. Security Council. Obviously Iraq can be attacked once more, but the ability to make him comply is doubtful.He has repeatedly shown he can resist others' ''rational'' punishment/reward calculations.

For more than two years, the U.S. government has had evidence that Iraq, in the months before it invaded Kuwait in August 1990, diverted food purchased under a $5 billion American aid program and exchanged it for money and arms in the Soviet bloc and in other countries.Iraq may have used some of the money, one high-level American government official wrote in an Oct. 13, 1989, confidential document, to acquire "sensitive nuclear technologies."A team of Department of Agriculture investigators confronted high-ranking members of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government with some of these accusations that same month.

Washington. -- The White House's decision to employ the Gulf War for partisan advantage is reprehensile, if predictable. Operation Desert Storm's magnificent military accomplishments are now to be dragged through the sewer of election-year politics, cheapening the sacrifice of thousands of American servicemen and women who risked their lives in that conflict.No less reprehensible has been the political timidity of all too many of those who, like insurgent Republican Pat Buchanan, have had their honor and patriotism questioned because they took issue with the Bush administration's behavior during the Persian Gulf crisis that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990.

Jerrold Cooper studies Iranian antiquities -- in Paris, Philadelphia, London and Istanbul. Last year, he hoped to study them in Iraq, too -- a dream long-deferred for Jewish scholars who have been unable to visit that Muslim country.But when the Iraqi army marched into Kuwaiti, the scholar's hope beat a hasty retreat."I was supposed to go to Iraq in December 1990," said Dr. Cooper, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "It was the first major conference in Baghdad of people who study Iraqi antiquities.

WASHINGTON -- Six Iraqi army transport helicopters flew into Saudi Arabia from occupied Kuwait late last night in the most dramatic defection to date from Iraq's armed forces, according to U.S. military sources.The aircraft, identified by U.S. sources as Soviet-made Hip-E medium helicopters, were promptly met by Saudi F-15 and U.S. Navy F-18 jet fighters when they crossed into Saudi Arabian airspace, a source at the Pentagon said.No shots were exchanged, said the source, who added that the fighters then escorted four of the Iraqi helicopters to Ra's al-Khafji airfield, located near Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast, about 12 miles south of the Kuwaiti border.

Washington. -- The White House's decision to employ the Gulf War for partisan advantage is reprehensile, if predictable. Operation Desert Storm's magnificent military accomplishments are now to be dragged through the sewer of election-year politics, cheapening the sacrifice of thousands of American servicemen and women who risked their lives in that conflict.No less reprehensible has been the political timidity of all too many of those who, like insurgent Republican Pat Buchanan, have had their honor and patriotism questioned because they took issue with the Bush administration's behavior during the Persian Gulf crisis that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990.

WASHINGTON -- A House subcommittee chairman accused the Bush administration yesterday of attempting to cover up its sympathetic policy toward Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait.Representative Sam Gejdenson, D-Conn., leveled the charge after a report that a Commerce Department official was being dismissed for telling Congress that the administration approved exports of technology with military applications to Iraq over his objections.The report in Tuesday's editions of the New York Times quoted an official as saying that the office of White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu ordered that the Commerce official, Dennis E. Kloske, undersecretary for export administration, be removed from the payroll by June 1."

The leader of a large local community of Muslims said today his followers are loyal American citizens and urged against any anti-Muslim backlash as the Persian Gulf war intensifies.However, Ronald Shakir, imam of the Masjid Walter Omar at 4905 Liberty Heights Ave., added, "We don't advocate aggression, but if our children or anyone in our community is attacked, we would fight back with whatever means we could find. War begins when diplomacy ends."Shakir, at a news conference this morning at the mosque, said he knows of no incidents of harassment against local Muslims.