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After Iraqi troops kept Kuwait City occupied, U.S. president George Bush gave Saddam Hussein a deadline after a frustrating week of Soviet efforts to broker a deal that would be acceptable to both Iraq and allies. The day before, Feb. 15, a Baghdad announcement indicated Iraq\'s \"readiness to deal with\" the basic U.N. resolution demanding withdrawal from Kuwait. But Iraq\'s farfetched conditions, one demanded reparations for allied bombing, let have Bush denounce the proposal as a \"cruel hoax\".
The U.N. didn\'t continue to find a peaceful solution, but Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed himself encouraged enough to invite Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to Moscow for new talks. In Moscow, Gorbachev handed Aziz a Soviet proposal that was quickly communicated to the allies fighting Iraq. Basically, Iraq would withdraw, supposedly unconditionally, from Kuwait. In return, Moscow would have undertaken to preserve Saddam from any punitive actions (a war-crimes trial, for instance), guarantee Iraq\'s territorial integrity, try to get economic sanctions against Iraq lifted and work for an overall Middle East peace conference. This proposal didn\'t set a timetable for withdrawal from Kuwait, so the allies had the fear that Saddam may leave Kuwait in weeks or months. But in private, allied officials were blunt in contending that Saddam must lose his face if not his skin. His armies must not only be beaten but beaten so thoroughly and unmistakably that there will be no way to disguise the loss. One more time this showed that the allies didn\'t care much about a peaceful solution. Wanted they to demonstrate their strength regardless?
Partly the allies didn\'t want to lose their face, but if they would have lifted the economical embargo and performed Saddams conditions, their doing would have been called a poor show. Annulment of all U.N. resolutions after withdrawal would have relieved Iraq of any pressure to pay reparations for having ravished Kuwait. Whether such reparations could ever be collected from an Iraq economy knocked practically flat by bombing is uncertain. On the other side there had to be more at stake than let Saddam bleed for his doing. I think that this war wasn\'t just a demonstration of might, but also a financial challenge all around Persian Gulf oil. I won\'t think about the possibility, that a poor country was occupied by an other poor country. The motivation of quick help would be very low, because allies would think \"no money, no help\".
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