TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032591/0325006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.7 KB | 83 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 39

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

Our Man in Kuwait


By Michael Kramer


    On Friday evening, March 1, an advance guard of six Kuwaiti
Cabinet ministers arrived home to reclaim control of their
nation. The news was all bad. The oil-well fires were worse
than expected, food and medicine were in short supply, water
and electricity were memories. But the prime topic of
conversation that night was the "Skip problem."

    The "Skip" in question was Edward ("Skip") Gnehm Jr., 46,
the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait. The "problem" was really a fear.
Many Kuwaitis were afraid that the U.S., after having freed
their country from Iraq's domination, aimed to run the place
as an American colony and that Skip Gnehm was George Bush's
designated proconsul.

    There never was a real problem, of course. The Kuwaitis
themselves have been running the show all along (with
disastrous consequences). "Skip is an adviser, a facilitator,"
says Ali Salem, a Kuwaiti resistance leader who stayed behind
when the government fled to exile last August. "It's the
government's own incompetence that has made them wary of
someone who knows what he's doing. The fact is, we would
probably be in better shape today if we had made Gnehm
proconsul."

    A native of Georgia whose two great-grandfathers fought on
different sides during the Civil War, Gnehm has a reputation
for navigating successfully through difficult straits. In the
wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when relations between the
U.S. and Syria were restored, it was Gnehm who ran the U.S.
interests section in Damascus. When Washington wanted a
presence in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, Gnehm was
selected. When the sensitive issue of reflagging Kuwaiti oil
tankers arose during the Iran-Iraq war, Gnehm was a key
negotiator. "He is unassuming and unflappable," says Ali
al-Khalifa al-Sabah, Kuwait's Finance Minister, "exactly the
kind of guy to deal with Arabs like us."

    As ambassador to a government without a country, Gnehm found
his diplomatic skills tested almost daily at the Sheraton Hotel
near Taif, Saudi Arabia, where the Kuwaiti leadership waited
out the occupation. Tempers frayed, decisions were postponed,
depression was common. A real crisis arose when Iraq started
dumping Kuwaiti oil into the gulf in January. The Saudis and
Kuwaitis argued over what to do. It took 48 hours of patient
haggling, but Gnehm finally got both sides to agree: U.S.
bombers would blast Al-Ahmadi oil facility's manifolds to stem
the flow. Gnehm's best trick was getting Kuwait's Oil Minister
to believe the idea had been his all along.

    These days, it is more of the same. It is Gnehm who has
prodded the government into revamping its food-distribution
system; Gnehm who watches over the American troops trying hard
to minimize Kuwaiti retaliation against those who collaborated
with the Iraqis; and Gnehm who has insisted that the
government's ministers cease promising the imminent return of
services, something they are weeks if not months away from
accomplishing. In a particularly significant triumph shortly
before he welcomed home Kuwait's Emir last Thursday, Gnehm
persuaded the electrical-repair teams to begin toiling around
the clock; previously, they were putting in eight-hour days.
"Imagine," says another Western diplomat, "Kuwait is falling
apart, and something that obvious has to be counted as a
diplomatic coup."

    Through it all, Gnehm speaks softly and smiles constantly.
What he knows is simple: most governments are like most people.
An outsider can educate and elucidate -- and even kick butt.
But in the end, no government can be saved from itself.