Chances of U.N. Winning Gulf Cease-Fire Called Dim

WASHINGTON — U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar’s peace mission to Tehran this week stands scant chance of producing the cease-fire in the seven-year-old Iran-Iraq War that was demanded in a Security Council resolution, according to U.S. and gulf-state diplomats.

The diplomats and other experts, speaking in weekend broadcast interviews, also raised doubts that U.N. members would seriously punish Iran for ignoring the cease-fire resolution, approved by the 15-nation Security Council on July 20.

The United States, citing provisions of the U.N. Charter, pledged last week to seek a U.N.-sponsored global arms embargo against Iran if Perez de Cuellar fails to persuade Iran to join a cease-fire.

Speaking on the CBS interview program “Face the Nation,” Vernon A. Walters, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, predicted Sunday that Iran “will try and stall further” on the cease-fire issue while pressing its land war against Iraq and guerrilla actions in the Persian Gulf.

Planning for 10 More Years

Iraq, which has accepted the cease-fire resolution, has little hope of Iranian compliance and is “planning for . . . 10 or more than 10 years’ war,” Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Nizar Hamdoon, said Sunday on the same CBS program.

Walters said the five permanent members of the Security Council--the United States, Soviet Union, China, France and Britain--have held talks on sanctions to be imposed against Iran should it reject a cease-fire. He added, however, that no agreement has been reached on the subject.

Iran has not formally rejected the U.N. resolution, which calls for an end to fighting and an inquiry into responsibility for the conflict, but it has demanded that Iraq be blamed for the war as a condition of any cease-fire.

Perez de Cuellar plans to leave Thursday for Tehran.

Iraq has ended an unofficial 45-day respite in the air phase of the so-called tanker war, where it enjoys military superiority, and has resumed bombing ships and Iranian oil facilities in the gulf.

In response, Iran last week stepped up naval attacks on foreign ships and apparently fired at least two Chinese-made missiles, possibly Silkworms, at Kuwait, whose oil tankers sail the Persian Gulf under U.S. naval escort. Iran regards Kuwait as an ally of Iraq.

On Saturday, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, Sheik Saud al Sabah, said the Iranian actions have created a “very dangerous, critical situation.” Speaking on Cable News Network, Saud warned Iran that “there are certain limits to our patience and to our sense of accommodation.”

U.N. Ambassador Walters played down the suspected Silkworm attacks. Brushing aside several reports linking the attacks to Iran, he said he has no evidence that the missiles were in fact Iranian-launched Silkworms. He also discounted previous American threats to wipe out Silkworm missile batteries if they were used, saying the United States “shall decide what we shall do” if the missile attacks begin to interfere with navigation in the gulf.

Secret Talks Discounted

In a British Broadcasting Corp. interview Sunday, Walters discounted a report in the Observer, a London newspaper, claiming that U.S. and Iranian officials met recently in Switzerland to discuss the gulf crisis and American hostages in Lebanon.

The Observer, citing an unidentified “well-placed” Iranian source, said representatives of Vice President George Bush and Secretary of State George P. Shultz were at the session.

“I am a U.S. Cabinet officer, and I have no knowledge of any such meeting,” Walters told the BBC. The State Department said it was unaware of the contact, and the Swiss Foreign Ministry said it could neither confirm nor deny the meeting.