Mrs Thatcher has rejected a suggestion by the former Prime Minister, Mr Edward Heath, that President Saddam Hussein should be offered a deal to pull Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. In a television interview yesterday, Mr Heath called for an immediate diplomatic initiative. He advocated a dual strategy: the threat of force, together with concessions - such as cancelling Iraqi debts to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He dismissed any comparison with the appeasement of Hitler. Mrs Thatcher, however, believes a compromise deal would benefit the aggressor - Saddam Hussein. She made her views known during a visit to Czechoslovakia - the first time a British Prime Minister has been there since the War.
Our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Reynolds, reports from Prague: [end p1]
The Prime Minister has come here to celebrate the emergence of new democracies in Europe and to argue the advantages of a market economy. But with the Gulf crisis so prominent, her officials said that she could not avoid using the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after Munich as an example of the results of appeasement. She is expected to make the point in a speech to the Czechoslovak Parliament tomorrow. Her spokesman said that she believed that to suggest compromise over Kuwait was to ensure that the aggressor gained, and that was unacceptable. The highlight of her visit today will be talks with President Havel, whom she met in London earlier this year. She will urge him to press on with privatisation as quickly as possible. She told a local paper that no efficiency could be expected from state enterprises.