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| Affiliation | Nonpartisan |
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| Name | April C. Glaspie |
| Address |
, California , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
April 26, 1942
(82 years)
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| Contributor | Ben |
| Last Modifed | Ben
Jun 22, 2005 01:32pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | April Catherine Glaspie
Glaspie (born April 26, 1942), American diplomat, is best-known for her role in the events leading up to the Gulf War of 1991. Glaspie was born in Vancouver, Canada, and graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1963 and from Johns Hopkins University in 1965. In 1966 she entered the United States diplomatic service, where she became an expert on the Middle East.
After postings in Kuwait, Syria and Egypt Glaspie was appointed Ambassador to Iraq in 1989. She was the first woman to be appointed an American Ambassador to an Arab country. She had a reputation as a respected Arabist, and her instructions were to broaden cultural and commercial contacts with the Iraqi regime in hopes of "civilizing" it.
Glaspie's appointment followed a period from 1980 to 1988 during which the United States had given covert support to Iraq during its war with Iran (see Iran-Iraq War). Although the extent of U.S. assistance to Iraq during the period has been exaggerated (the Soviet Union was always Iraq's chief ally and arms supplier, followed by France), it was substantial. Its motivation was the belief that the Islamic revolution in Iran posed a greater threat to Western interests than did Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime. Some argue that Saddam assumed that U.S. support for his regime would continue once the war had ended, and that it would extend to approval for his plans to achieve Iraqi domination over the Arab world, beginning with the annexation of Kuwait.
Before 1918 Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra, and thus in a sense part of Iraq, but Iraq had recognised its independence in 1961. After the end of the Iran-Iraq War (during the course of which Kuwait lent Iraq US$14 billion), Saddam revived Iraq's claim to Kuwait, and fomented disputes over the exact demarcation of the border, access to waterways, the price at which Kuwaiti oil was being sold, and oil-drilling in border areas, to provide a pretext for military action.
t was in this context that Glaspie had her first meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz on July 25, 1990. What was said at that meeting has been the subject of much speculation. At least two purported transcripts of the meeting have been published, both apparently based on versions released by Iraq. The State Department has not confirmed the accuracy of these transcripts, and they must be treated with caution.
One version of the transcript has Glaspie saying: "We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?"
Later the transcript has Glaspie saying: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."
Another version of the transcript (the one published in the New York Times on 23 September 1990) has Glaspie saying: "But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late '60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi [Chadli Klibi, Secretary General of the Arab League ] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly."
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