This is the CBS Sunday Night News. Bill Plant reporting. Good evening. Secretary of State Baker says that he is still hopeful that there will be high-level talks between the U.S. and Iraq.
On his way to a NATO meeting, Baker told reporters that he still hopes to go to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein following a meeting between Iraq's foreign minister and President Bush.
But for now, there's no break in the standoff, as Randall Pinkston reports from the White House.
With no progress on talks between the U.S. and Iraq, one foreign policy expert describes the dispute between President Bush and Saddam Hussein as a personal battle.
Well, I think we're headed for a massive game of diplomatic chicken. I believe they will meet, but I think we're going to be watching a lot of mood swings here.
The United Nations' deadline for Iraq to leave Kuwait is a month away. In recent weeks, President Bush has been talking tougher than ever.
A former Reagan administration official describes it as part of a deliberate strategy.
I think the president has intentionally tried to narrow the options so that Saddam Hussein knows that the president wants to bring this to a head.
From senior House Democrat Lee Hamilton, a voice of caution on the rush to war.
I think the main thing is just to keep the channels of communications open and not dig yourself into a position that leaves no room for maneuver or flexibility.
Some foreign policy analysts suggest one way out of the impasse would be to have U.N. Secretary General Perez de Cuellar intercede, taking both sides off the hook.
Randall Pinkston, CBS News, Washington.
Meanwhile, U.S. preparations for war in the Gulf continue, and Secretary of Defense Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Powell are headed back to Saudi Arabia. Jim Stewart reports.
It will be Cheney's third trip to Saudi Arabia since the Persian Gulf crisis erupted, and his first since both Iraq and the United States both announced they would commit more troops to the desert standoff.
Even in the last few days, we've seen the continued deployment of Iraqi military forces to Kuwait and southern Iraq to what we describe as the Kuwaiti theater of operations.
Cheney and Powell will spend a day and a half in meetings with General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, and then separate for a day and a half of visits with troops in the field and aboard several of the 46 U.S. warships in the area.
While attempting to boost morale, Cheney's message to the soldiers is expected to be the same pessimistic one he's recently delivered to Congress.
There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Saddam Hussein is prepared to comply with the U.N. Security Council resolutions and withdraw his forces from Kuwait.
His aides say Secretary Cheney enjoys his time with the troops in the field and that this trip is both special and crucial as everyone looks toward January 15th and the deadline for decision between war and peace.
Jim Stewart, CBS News, the Pentagon.
The Iraqis are also making a point of mobilizing for war, but as Alan Pizzi reports from Baghdad, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're unwilling to talk.
The Iraqis are heading into next week in a be-prepared mode.
Civil defense lessons have become a regular feature of evening television, a message to the public that it may all go wrong.
The problem is a date for the visit of Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz to Washington, followed by Secretary of State James Baker coming here.
Each side is still insisting that the other give in.
Diplomatic sources with long experience here are still trying to guess whether or not the issue will be settled.
But there is a school of thought that says Saddam Hussein might come up with a compromise.
They are tough negotiators and that they are unyielding during the initial negotiations.
This weekend, Saddam told Muslim leaders visiting Baghdad that the jihad, or holy war, he has been calling for should be directed not just at the Americans,
but also at what he called corrupt Muslims, a reference to America's Arab allies.
And if the Iraqis are aware of what their army is up against, they show no signs of it.
The Iraqis want to be treated as equals by the U.S.
And next week is likely to be a test of wills, with each side trying to make the other blink.
Alan Pezzi, CBS News, Baghdad.
Still ahead on the CBS Sunday night news, Panama, one year after the invasion.
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Although the Subaru Legacy is just as durable as our older models, it's a lot more stylish.
So you no longer have to own a Subaru 10 years before you think it's beautiful.
There were funerals in Israel today for three Jews stabbed to death near Tel Aviv.
The mourners shouted death to Arabs, and the government said that it will deport four Palestinians suspected of belonging to a militant Muslim group that claimed responsibility for the killers.
Haitians voted in national elections today, their latest attempt at democracy, since the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship nearly five years ago.
Turnout was heavy, no violence was reported.
Among the international observers was former President Jimmy Carter.
Romanians demonstrated today to mark the first anniversary of their revolution against communism, and to demand the resignation of the current government.
Bert Quint reports.
In Timisoara, where Romania's bloody sprint to freedom began a year ago today, there were prayers for the victims and protests against the new democratically elected government.
Timisoara's quarrel with the old dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was more ethnic than political or economic.
These people are of Hungarian descent and were often persecuted.
Their spiritual leader, Bishop Laszlo Tochet, says, we still live in an atmosphere of suspicion, intolerance, and hostility.
There were minor protests in Bucharest too, and charges that President Ion Iliuscu is ruining the economy and keeping communists in high positions.
These demonstrations, along with strikes by students and workers, apparently are designed to bring down the government, but in the capital at least they seem to have little support.
People complain about the continued shortages and rising prices, but in Bucharest most consider that part of a costly but necessary transition from communism to a Western-style free market society.
Bert Quint, CBS News, Bucharest.
American Airlines agreed today to buy all of TWA's routes between the United States and London, price tag nearly half a billion dollars.
At the same time, TWA said that it will make another bid to buy Pan Am.
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It was a year ago this week that the U.S. invaded Panama to get rid of its strongman Manuel Noriega after a two-year economic embargo failed to do the job.
Unlike the military power the U.S. may use in the Gulf, the Panama action was taken with no advance notice, debates or international sanctions.
And a year after the fact, many of the problems in Panama haven't gone away.
The economy is still in shambles. Drug smuggling continues.
General Noriega is in Miami. One wonders if he'll ever be brought to trial. What was it all for?
The invasion wasn't only to dump Noriega. Washington said it was to bring democracy to Panama as well. But there are problems with that too.
Certainly we can't say that democracy has been firmly implanted because the U.S. is still very much in charge of Panama's security.
And probably it couldn't exist as an independent government without U.S. security forces.
And severe economic problems persist, at least partly because the U.S., which promised a billion dollars, scaled that down to $420 million, of which only $120 million has arrived.
Unemployment ranges from 20 to 30 percent, and the war's devastation persists.
The fact is that thousands and thousands of Panamanian civilians are still homeless, living in warehouses, and we've done nothing about it.
Former Ambassador Moss thinks that what's happened in the aftermath of the Panama invasion may have some lessons which apply in the Parisian Gulf.
The biggest lesson I can think of is that if one is planning military action, one ought to plan a very detailed follow-up for what happens afterwards.
Because clearly in the Panamanian example, the invasion was well planned, but beginning the next day, not much else was planned.
Both Moss and Smith urged that the U.S. pay more attention to Panama's economy, noting that the U.S. is due to transfer control of the canal to Panama in less than a decade.
The Subaru Legacy is a lot larger than the older Subaru, but people still think we're small and boxy.
The Subaru Legacy is plush and comfortable, but people still think we're just basic transportation, with 93 percent registered in the last 10 years still on the road.
We hope our old image wears out a lot faster than our cars do.
At 5 a.m., Walter Miller and his son Bill roll out of bed and into their overalls. But before they think about farming, they think about coffee.
They want what you want, an aroma that fills the kitchen, a taste that's rich and satisfying. For them, that's Folger's Crystals. Deep, dark, mountain-grown.
There are other coffees, other ways to make it, but the one that Miller's used to brace them for the day ahead is this one, Folger's Crystals.
Mikhail Gorbachev convenes a meeting of the Soviet Parliament tomorrow aimed at keeping the USSR united. On the eve of that session, another kind of union was being forged, as Barry Peterson reports.
It was an amazing sign of the times, two former enemies talking this weekend in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev and South Korea's President, Noh Tae-woo.
And these are signs of the times as well. Moscow decked out with billboards for South Korean companies as old enemies become new business partners.
We are prepared to supply consumer products of all variety that may be in demand by the Soviet economy.
But long-term deals are not solving Gorbachev's immediate problems, how to feed his people and stem their anger because life is getting worse.
One answer came this last week, a television appearance by the head of the KGB warning that his agency will crack down on those who steal food or otherwise defy the authority of the state.
Many here believe this new tough line was ordered by Gorbachev, who wants to show that he is firmly in control.
And as delegates registered today for the opening session of the Congress of People's Deputies, many think there may be other signs of Gorbachev turning tough.
Gorbachev's friends say it is his way to protect his radical reforms.
Others say it is Gorbachev finally admitting that to hold his country together, he must rule the way Soviet leaders did in the past with an iron fist.
Barry Peterson, CBS News, Moscow.
And finally, it was exactly 217 years ago that our forefathers staged the granddaddy of all tax protests, the Boston Tea Party.
And in Boston Harbor today, descendants of the original raiders repeated the party line, read die ships, no taxation without representation.
And thus was born America's historic opposition to the tea word.
Well, that's the CBS Sunday night news. I'm Bill Plant in New York. Good night and have a good week.