NEW YORK — On the eve of the Persian Gulf War, U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar sought to reassure Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that President Bush wanted a peaceful solution to the Gulf crisis--"desperately."

Hussein told Perez de Cuellar that he had pulled a brigade from Kuwait after announcing a withdrawal on Aug. 4, then changed his mind as U.S. forces began arriving in Saudi Arabia, according to a report on the purported contents of their secret Baghdad talks.

In a major breach of diplomatic etiquette, and despite a personal protest from Perez de Cuellar, Iraq recently released a transcript of the leaders' conversation to a Jordanian newspaper, which published the material over the weekend. The candid document, said diplomats who examined its contents Monday, was as much a propaganda paper as a keyhole view of sensitive negotiations.

The diplomats also said it appeared that parts of Perez de Cuellar's comments may well have been altered--especially when the secretary general is quoted as praising Hussein. But the same diplomats, who are intimately familiar with Perez de Cuellar's thought processes and speech patterns, added that large sections of the transcript appeared genuine.

A spokesman for Perez de Cuellar declined on Monday to make public the U.N. version of the talks.

Worldwide attention was riveted on the secretary general's last-chance-for-peace meeting with Hussein in Baghdad on Jan. 13, just two days before the expiration of the Security Council deadline authorizing force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.

According to the transcript, Perez de Cuellar told Hussein that he had spoken with Bush four times just before arriving in Baghdad but was not acting as "the envoy of any person."

"The only thing I want to help with is how we can avert a confrontation or the outbreak of war . . . ," Perez de Cuellar is quoted as saying, adding that, while he could not guarantee Bush's intentions, "he wants a peaceful solution and desperately."

"On the day I left for Baghdad, I discussed things with him on the phone," Perez de Cuellar is quoted. "I told him, 'I will meet President Saddam Hussein. Can I say that you want a peaceful solution?' He (Bush) said, 'Despite the impression conveyed by the media . . . I prefer the peaceful solution to the crisis.' "