Ministers confer at U.N. on fighting but take no action

Press, 24 September 1980, Page 8

Ministers confer at U.N. on fighting but take no action

NZPA-Reuter New York Many Foreign Ministers, in New York for the second week of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, yesterday privately discussed the possibilities for United Nations intervention in the Iran-Iraq fighting. Rut there was no public sign so far of a start to the machinery needed for an organisation like the United Nations Security Council taking a hand in the dispute.

The United Nations Secre-tary-General (Dr Kurt Waldheim) has appealed to Iraq and Iran to stop their fighting and seek a negotiated settlement of their differences. - : ; :■

President Carter has also appealed to the two sides to end their conflict through the United Nations c ■ some other, means.

The British Foreign Secretary (Lord Carrington) yesterday , discussed with Dr .Waldheim the possibility of his; invoking article 99 of the United Nations Charter which empowers the Secre-tary-Genral to call a Security Council meeting if peace is threatened.

.Qualified sources said that Lord Carrington did . not press, Dr Waldheim to use. his special authority which has seldom been exercised although Britain believed the Security Council should act. Diplomats said the Islamic Conference also did not plan to ask the Security Council to act.

However, Lord Carrington was expected to raise the issue in a speech later, when the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Andrei Gromyko) also was due to speak.

The United States said yesterday it hoped that

Iraq’s main arms supplier, the Soviet Union, would avoid any involvement in the conflict.

In Moscow earlier, a special Iraqi presidential envoy, Tareq Aziz' held talks with the Soviet Communist Party secretary (Mr Boris Ponomaryov) about the fighting. Questioned about Iran’s allegations that Iraqi forces were acting as American “puppets,” the spokesman said: ’ “We are not involved. We have said we are not involved in this issue. And we do. not intend to become involved in the dispute between Iran and Iraq.” In Moscow, foreign diplomats who have discussed the conflict with Soviet officials say it appears to have both embarrassed and alarmed the Kremlin, which has a friendship treaty with Iraq but has also sought to woo the Islamic leadership in Iran.

The Soviet Union has a friendship treaty with Iraq, which went into force in 1972, and provides most of

•the hardware for the Iraqi armed forces, a fact which brought, criticism from Iran earlier this month.

In recent years, however, Moscow’s relations with President Hussein’s administration have been cool. Iraq, like Iran, criticised the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan last December although il. also condemned the United States reaction to the move.

The foreign diplomats say Moscow officials are uneasy about the emergence of a new area of high tension, and possibly full-scale conflict, on the Soviet Union’s sensitive southern borders and would prefer to avoid taking sides. Reporting on the conflict in the official media ove' the last weeks has been cautious, largely restricted to reports from the official Tass news agency quoting at almost identical length statements from Bagdad and Teheran.

The Communist Party organ, "Pravda,” in the first Moscow comment on the fighting, accused the United States of setting them against each other as part of a plan, to dominate the world.

"Following the principle of divide and rule, Washington is seeking to prolong the Middle East crisis,i to .split Iran from tire Arabs, to set Iran against Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan against Afghanistan, and the like,” “Pravda” declared.

Foreign diplomats in Moscow said it seemed unlikely Soviet officials genuinely believed that the United States had any of the leverage needed in Teheran or Bagdad to make such a plan feasible.