By David Hoffman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 23, 1991; Page A01

Post time line

Behind the televised spectacle of publicly uttered positions and counterpositions over the past several days, Iraq has made a series of important concessions to the Soviet Union and the U.S.-led allied military coalition, U.S. and allied sources said yesterday.

That movement, as much as Iraq's ostensible intransigence, led President Bush to seek to tighten the screws on Baghdad still further with yesterday's ultimatum demanding Iraq start to leave Kuwait by noon today. Iraq mocked the ultimatum and remained defiant, but according to administration officials, outside analysts and allied diplomats, Baghdad is clearly backpedaling and feeling the pressure of both Soviet diplomacy and coalition military strikes.

Although Iraq is trying to exploit the differences between Washington and Moscow on the timetable for leaving Kuwait, and may have held off a massive ground assault for awhile, there is a growing consensus in the administration and among the allies that President Saddam Hussein is thinking about how to leave Kuwait, rather than how to stay.

"The enemy is crying uncle, so you tighten your grip on the enemy to get the most out of them," said a European diplomat familiar with allied strategy and the intense U.S.-Soviet diplomacy in recent days. Former assistant secretary of state Richard Murphy, speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America," said, "When I look back to just a week ago when the word 'withdrawal' was first used by the Iraqis, I think it's moved further in the right direction. There's less chutzpah in the Iraqi position today."

A high-ranking U.S. policy-maker said the massive torching of Kuwaiti oil facilities was yet another piece of evidence that Saddam was contemplating a withdrawal. The official recalled that Saddam used similar tactics when forced to retreat from Iranian territory during the Iran-Iraq war.

"Obviously, the Iraqis have moved. He has suddenly moved a long way," the official said. Since offering his own peace initiative Feb. 15, Saddam has dropped demands for linkage to a broader Middle East settlement and has agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, albeit with conditions.

Just in the last 24 hours, Iraq appears to have made more concessions in Moscow.

On Thursday night, Soviet presidential spokesman Vitaly Ignatenko announced that Iraq wanted to have the United Nations economic sanctions lifted after two-thirds of its troops had left Kuwait, and the rest of the sanctions canceled once withdrawal was complete. But when Ignatenko briefed reporters yesterday, after more meetings in Moscow, he said the Soviet-brokered plan was being "seriously adjusted to strengthen the responsibilities of Iraq" and "the language is being made more watertight." The two-thirds formula had disappeared.

By announcing the ultimatum yesterday and for the first time setting out criteria for a withdrawal, Bush was intending to further intensify the pressure on Saddam. Administration strategists concluded, based on Bush's conversations with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev Thursday night and Friday morning, that Moscow's diplomatic efforts were not going far enough and may have reached a limit. Moreover, they felt the Soviet effort might give Iraq time to stall and seek new concessions.

At the same time, officials pointed out that the U.S.-Soviet efforts were not harshly adversarial, but rather were fueled by competition between Washington and Moscow. The Soviets have hoped to seal a big diplomatic victory by getting Saddam out of Kuwait and offering to protect his regime afterwards. The United States and many of its allies want to get him out of Kuwait either mortally wounded or removed from power altogether.

In particular, officials said Bush and his top national security advisers felt it was important to regain the initiative from Moscow after Gorbachev's spokesman had disclosed on Thursday night an initial version of the Soviet-brokered peace plan with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.

"It was a way of putting an end to negotiations that could have been going to and fro for days," the European diplomat said. "The initiative was clearly in Moscow, and the Americans were on the sidelines. This was a way of saying, we decide" the withdrawal terms, he said.

"We had to define the situation and the moment," said an administration official. "What the Soviets were doing was useful but not really sufficient. What they were doing was producing a change, but {that} was not really enough. We knew Saddam couldn't be trusted, and it just wasn't enough."

The Soviet proposal would essentially shield Iraq from the punishment of economic and political sanctions after the war by canceling the U.N. resolutions. Even the way Iraq accepted the Soviet proposal indicated to U.S. officials that Saddam was looking for a way out.

"What is it he's trying to get?" asked the senior policy-maker. "He's changed, and it's no accident. He's looking to get assurances about the future. We're saying it cannot be back to business as usual. We're not going to be a party to an outcome that is business as usual."

U.S. officials said they realize Saddam may well ignore Bush's ultimatum, just as he ignored the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline to get out of Kuwait. But they said the ultimatum was based on the calculation that constant pressure on Saddam is what is needed to finally break his grip on Kuwait.

Toward this end, even before a ground offensive, allied military pressure has been steadily increasing on Iraqi troops. Air sorties in the Kuwaiti theatre have topped 1,000 a day, and a Central Command official confirmed yesterday, for the first time, that the allies are using napalm, a flammable gel, in the conflict. The official said the napalm was being used against oil-filled trenches, but a senior U.S. Marine official said it was also intended to be used against entrenched troops.