The United Nations on Saturday gave the world's navies the right to use force to stop vessels trading with Iraq, and Baghdad cut supplies to some embassies in Kuwait but did not carry out its threat to close them by force.
Iraq's U.S. ambassador, meanwhile, said the families of American diplomats who fled Kuwait to Baghdad can leave but that the diplomats will be detained. He also said Iraq will not use force against the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait.In another U.N. initiative, Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced on Saturday he has invited the Iraqi foreign minister to urgent talks aimed at resolving the Persian Gulf crisis.
Perez de Cuellar said the talks could begin this week in New York or Geneva. But he did not say whether Iraq had accepted the offer.
Even as the Security Council took steps to enforce its sanctions, evidence mounted Saturday that the embargo is already squeezing Iraq's citizens.
Reports filtering out of Baghdad described panic buying; shortages of cooking oil, flour and fruit; the start of a national rationing program; and house-to-house sweeps by militiamen hunting food hoarders.
The official Iraqi News Agency reported that hundreds of Iraqi children gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Saturday carrying signs complaining that the international trade sanctions are depriving them of milk.
The United States and its allies praised the U.N. Security Council for voting early Saturday to allow military action to uphold the embargo aimed at punishing Iraq for invading Kuwait on Aug. 2.
"Iraq has evaded resolutions of the Security Council and thumbed its nose at all humanity," U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering said following the unanimous vote at the United Nations. "This has prompted the council to make one of the most important decisions in its history."
The White House said the vote "further strengthens the world resolve to force Iraq out of Kuwait." Although U.S. warships have been shadowing Iraqi vessels in the Persian Gulf, they have not forced them to stop.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Abdul Amir Al-Anbari, denounced the Security Council vote and said it could lead to war.
"This use of force by the United States or any of its allies or puppets will lead inevitably to a number of explosions which will burn all in their path," he said at the United Nations in New York.
Iraq, meanwhile, carried out its threat to cut supplies to embassies in Kuwait, shutting off power at the Italian, British, Austrian and French missions; power and water at the U.S., East German and Norwegian embassies; and power, water and telephone service at the Japanese mission.
Iraqi soldiers, some armed with machine guns and mortars, remained outside many embassies in Kuwait City but made no effort to remove diplomats, according to reports reaching foreign ministries in several countries.
U.S. officials said an electric generator was being used at the U.S. Embassy and that other supplies remained adequate for Ambassador Nathaniel Howell and his staff of about 10.
Thousands of American troops and dozens of U.S. warships are within striking distance of Iraq and Kuwait, but President Bush has given no indication how he will respond if Iraq attempts to overrun the U.S. embassy in Kuwait.
Earlier this week, the United States reduced its embassy staff in Kuwait by sending about 100 U.S. diplomats and dependents to Baghdad, where they have been stranded. Iraq's U.S. ambassador said in Washington Saturday that the wives and children of the American diplomats can leave.
"The dependents are going to be released," said Mohamed al-Mashat, who had been summoned to the State Department for another U.S. protest.
"Some of them will be leaving soon." However, he said the diplomats will be treated "just like anybody else," meaning they will be detained.
As the embassy standoff continued, 96 Austrian hostages were freed in Iraq, an Austrian official said. Japan announced that some of its nationals had been rounded up.
Austrian President Kurt Waldheim secured the release of the Austrians while meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on Saturday.
Waldheim said later in Amman, Jordan, that he had raised the issue of U.S. and other Western citizens stranded in Iraq and Kuwait with Saddam, but had received no commitments from the Iraqi leader.
Waldheim, the first Western leader to meet Saddam since the invasion, has been shunned by Western leaders because he concealed his links to a German army unit in World War II that has been implicated in atrocities.
Saddam did not hesitate to use the visit by Waldheim, a former U.N. secretary-general, to again reject demands by the United Nations that he restore Kuwait's sovereignty and free the hostages.
Saddam, at a news conference with Austrian reporters, said Iraqi troops will not withdraw from Kuwait and repeated that foreigners have been moved to strategic points, including missile bases and oil refineries.
"I shall say that whatever collides with Iraq will find columns of dead bodies which may have a beginning but may not have an end," Saddam told the Austrian reporters.
"So it is the duty of Americans now to bear in mind that they must resort to a political solution and not to force, and to end this tendency they have that they can have anything they want," he said.