Having marched headlong to the precipice of war, both sides in the Persian Gulf conflict peered into the abyss last week and took a deep breath. From all the signs, each party wanted to inch back from the brink.
There was suddenly an enormous amount of talking -- peace talk, settlement talk, negotiation talk -- but most of it was just that, talk. Saddam Hussein, looking a little sweatier, issued a flurry of offers to negotiate, but his antics seemed intended mainly to avert a military showdown. A clutch of mediators led by U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar set off...