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Meanwhile, Gorbachev had a 90-minute telephone conversation with Bush, for which I was present. Bush expressed his appreciation for Gorbachev's efforts. But at the same time, he doubted that the change in Baghdad's position would lead to anything. Moreover, Bush stressed that he was concerned about the fate of the POWs. Nor did he think it was possible to ignore the colossal damage inflicted on Kuwait by the Iraqi aggression. The U.S. President was also dissatisfied with the period set for the troop withdrawal. As soon as he hung up, Gorbachev said to Bessmertnykh and me, "Make sure you pay particular attention to these concerns of President Bush's during the talks you will hold over the next hours."
There was practically no time for sleep. At the Foreign Ministry mansion on Alexei Tolstoy Street, Bessmertnykh, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Belonogov and I met with Aziz and his party. An exceedingly difficult bargaining session began. In fact, it took about an hour to deal just with the issue of the deadline for releasing American and other national POWs. The Iraqis kept referring to difficulties of a technical nature. In the end, we insisted: three days after the cease-fire began, and not a single day more.
The debate over the time frame for the troop pullout was also very difficult. The Iraqis insisted on six weeks, stressing technical reasons again. Since we knew that the season of winds and sandstorms would soon set in, making it difficult to carry out military actions, and that the Americans, under these conditions, would consider that Iraq was intentionally "dragging its feet," we proposed setting a separate deadline for the Iraqi troop withdrawal from Kuwait City -- during the first four days and no longer. We also managed to squeeze the deadline for a complete pullout to three weeks. Aziz simply would not go any further.
We failed to reach any agreement over the issue of lifting the sanctions imposed on Iraq in the resolutions adopted by the Security Council, following Resolution 660. These resolutions included the payment of compensation for the damage done to Kuwait. Aziz said he had a "rigid mandate" about how to handle this question, beyond which he could not go. In our view, the lifting of sanctions was a matter for the Security Council to decide. We could talk about the Soviet position only.
Taking President Bush's concerns into account, we had made some progress, even in those areas where the Iraqis seemed absolutely unshakable earlier that morning. For example, they removed the condition that U.N. economic sanctions should be lifted when Iraq had withdrawn two-thirds of its armed forces from Kuwait. Now they proposed that economic sanctions be lifted when the last Iraqi soldiers had left that country. It seemed to me that this shift cleared up any suspicions that Iraq wanted only the partial withdrawal of its troops.
Aziz said that any decisions would have to be taken by the entire leadership, and first of all, Saddam. He proposed that I fly with him to Baghdad immediately for a meeting. Realizing that time was running out, we rejected this plan and urged him to get in touch with the Iraqi leadership directly from Moscow.