474 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
him: the fact is that they’re not coming clean about anything and are
about to deliver a strike.’ The Americans, he said, were playing him for
a fool. Shevardnadze replied: ‘I believe the Secretary of State. He
promised to inform me if they take the decision to attack and that he’ll
keep me in the picture. They won’t do that without having informed us
of their plans. I believe that.’ Gorbachëv told Shevardnadze that the
Americans had fooled him into trusting everything they said.^5 It was
a fiery conversation, and Gorbachëv used turns of phrase that gave
personal offence to a man from the Caucasus.^6
The Arabists in the Foreign Affairs Ministry disliked the idea of
joining an invasion of Iraq. They shared Primakov’s feeling that Saddam
should not be abandoned, and they disapproved of Shevardnadze’s
whole approach after his aide Tarasenko reached a tentative under-
standing with Dennis Ross in the State Department in favour of
military action against Saddam. Shevardnadze stood by Tarasenko.^7
Chernyaev became convinced that he had secretly tipped the wink
to Baker that the USSR would not obstruct an invasion. This could
not have happened with Gorbachëv’s knowledge or permission. Soviet
policy was evidently no longer tightly coordinated.^8 Shevardnadze
buried himself in his duties – and it cheered him for a while that the
USSR, America and the European countries could at last sign the Con-
ventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty in Paris on 19 November.
The situation in the Persian Gulf was less encouraging. Meeting Iraqi
Foreign Affairs Minister Tariq Aziz on 26 November, Shevardnadze
pointed out that Iraq had been at war for a whole decade. The Soviet
Union had been its reliable supplier of military equipment and almost
an ally. It had never been paid properly for its goods. Shevardnadze
said this was intolerable and asked Aziz to discuss an agreeable sched-
ule for payment.^9
Evidence mounted in Moscow that influential people in the Soviet
political elite were gunning for Shevardnadze. He and his wife Nanuli
lived in some degree of fear. Information reached him that the KGB
was up to something in Tbilisi. As Georgia’s former Minister of
Internal Affairs, Shevardnadze knew of the potential for skulduggery.
The worry for him was that if anything like an emergency situation
were to be declared, the intelligence agency might arrest his protégés.
He felt the net tightening around him.^10 He assumed that if a coup
occurred, his life would be in danger. He noted the boldness of the
communist conservatives. When the new Vice President Gennadi
Yanaev took a one-roomed apartment on the same floor as the large