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Shevardnadze leaves at key time

By JAMES ROSEN

MOSCOW -- Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze resigned Thursday at a critical point in world affairs -- less than four weeks before a United Nations deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

Although the Soviet policy in the Persian Gulf crisis will not change overnight with Shevardnadze's departure, the resignation of the white- haired Georgian opens the door for more subtle modifications that could affect future U.S. decisions.

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Shevardnadze, who won admirers around the globe for his implementation of President Mikhail Gorbachev's 'new thinking,' built a particularly close relationship with Secretary of States James Baker.

The two men have met on the average of once a month during Baker's two years in office and kept in especially close touch since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2.

Baker and Shevardnadze have consulted at each important step in the gulf crisis, beginning with the joint U.S.-Soviet condemnation of Iraq's aggression the day after the invasion and through a series of progressively tougher U.N. resolutions.

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Their cooperation has spawned an unprecedented partnership in the gulf crisis, a superpower alliance that would have been unthinkable even three years ago and which symbolizes the new world order trumpeted by Gorbachev and, more belatedly, President Bush.

But now with the clock ticking down on the last U.N. measure, which gives Iraq President Saddam Hussein until Jan. 15 to pull out his troops or face military action, Shevardnadze's departure introduces an element of uncertainty at a time when the United States wants clarity of purpose.

After Shevardnadze's dramatic announcement, the U.S.S.R. Congress of People's Deputies adopted a resolution asking him to reconsider and even Gorbachev indicated he would be prepared to set the clock back.

Shevardnadze's spokesman Vitaly Churkin, however, said his boss's decision is final, and Shevardnadze himself gave little sign of having second thoughts.

If Shevardnadze is indeed gone from the scene, the biggest question mark for Washington is: Who will replace him?

One name floated in Moscow diplomatic circles in recent weeks, when it appeared that Shevardnadze might fill the new post of vice president, is Yevgeni Primakov, the Arab specialist who Gorbachev has sent on several Middle East missions to try to find a peaceful resolution of the gulf crisis.

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Primakov built close ties with Arab leaders from 1966 to 1985 as the Middle East correpondent for the Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda and then in Moscow as head of the Institute for Oriental Studies.

Primakov is widely viewed as being more resistant to the use of force to drive Iraq from Kuwait than Shevardnadze, who strongly advocated a political solution but openly acknowleded that military action might be needed to end the standoff.

Baker cultivated his budding relationship with Shevardnadze to build Soviet support for U.S. policy in the gulf.

Even if Shevardnadze's successor does not stray far from Moscow's present path, Baker will have to start from scratch in building a relationship with a new man.

Criticism over his handling of the gulf crisis, from conservative military officers and deputies who accused him of cozying up too close to Washington, was the last straw for Shevardnadze, who had already endured charges of having lost Eastern Europe in the anti-Communist revolutions of the past year.

Shevardnadze fiercely defended his approach to the gulf conflict in his resignation speech to the legislature.

'The policy of the Soviet Union in this conflict is serious, well thought out and sensible, corresponding to all standards of civilized relations between states,' he said. 'We have friendly relations with Iraq that were built over years, and these relations remain. But we have no moral right to accept aggression, the annexation of a small defenseless country.'

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The United States must hope for the same depth of conviction in the next Soviet foreign minister.

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