Iraq sanctions plan gets mixed reaction

By Carol Giacomo

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters): Revamped sanctions proposed this week by the United States and Britain address what critics have long felt are some key weaknesses in existing UN sanctions imposed on Iraq.

But they are no easy panacea for international concerns about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, analysts said.

The new measures -- if they are adopted by the UN Security Council -- may enable the U.S. to reclaim the public relations high ground on Iraq.

They will not, however, end debate over penalties more generally nor guarantee that Baghdad will be thwarted in its efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction, analysts said.

"Unfortunately, it seems to me this new policy may be more of a fig leaf for diplomatic retreat by the United States, although it's being presented as increasing pressure on Iraq," said James Phillips of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Charles Duelfer, former deputy head of the UN arms inspection commission for Iraq, said the proposal may be effective in slowing erosion or even building up the international consensus in support of sanctions, particularly those halting the transfer of military technology to Baghdad.

"But if you're betting on this to prevent Iraq from adding to its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, well it's not going to do much," Duelfer told Reuters.

Horse-trading over the British-U.S. attempt to overhaul the decade-old sanctions regime, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, began in earnest last week when a draft resolution was presented to the Security Council.

Sponsors would like to see it adopted before the existing Iraqi oil-for-food humanitarian program expires next month. But controversy over the plan is likely to continue for months.

The British-U.S. proposal is aimed at several goals.

First, it would drop restrictions on the sale or supply to Iraq of goods for civilian use, from bicycles to whiskey.

Until now, many imports had to be approved by the council's Iraqi sanctions committee, where some US$3.7 billion worth of orders are on hold because of U.S. objections.

Under the new proposal, Iraqi oil revenues needed to purchase imports would still be controlled by the United Nations through an escrow account, as they have been since 1997 when Iraq was allowed to sell oil again.

But the presumption is the funds could be spent on any item -- unless it is on a banned list of specific materiel or supplies that could enhance the military.

This is an attempt to deprive Saddam of what has been a huge propaganda victory.

He has created a public impression in Iraq and the Arab world, especially, that Washington and its allies are to blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people, although the Security Council increasingly has loosened its controls.

The council stipulated from the start that sanctions could be suspended if Iraq agreed to eliminate all of its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

"I think they are really on the right track here," former U.S. Ambassador Robert Pelletreau said of the new proposal.

"It will go a long ways toward reestablishing a strong international coalition against what's really worrying about Iraq," he told Reuters in an interview.

However, Iraq, which desperately wants sanctions lifted altogether, opposes the proposals. And some analysts say even if revised sanctions are enacted, Saddam will continue to delay importing all the civilian goods, including food and medicine, that his people need and oil revenues can afford.

Pelletreau said the U.S. and its allies should conduct a vigorous public relations campaign to underscore "there are no international restrictions on normal civilian imports."

Second, in an effort to keep military-related goods from Iraq, the draft creates an expanded list of "dual use" items with civilian and military applications, including supercomputers and telecommunications equipment.

But to make it harder for Baghdad to provoke international crises, as it repeatedly has done in recent years, there is no demand in the revised plan tying a loosening of the sanctions to Iraq's acceptance of intrusive inspections by UN arms experts.

Eliminating Iraq's WMD program would still be required before the United Nations would lift sanctions completely, however.

Other elements of the draft are aimed at tightening UN monitoring of Iraq's borders and encouraging neighbor states Turkey, Syria and Jordan to cooperate by allowing each to purchase up to 150,000 barrels of Iraqi oil per day.

These proposals would depend on further negotiations between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and council members and there is no guarantee they will ever be put into effect.

"If the U.S. could attain greater cooperation in monitoring what goes inside Iraq, then it might be a worthwhile trade, but I don't see that as being realistic. So I'm afraid what might happen is we reduce sanctions against Iraq but don't get the increased cooperation in constraining military programs," Phillips said.

He added that even under the best of circumstances, it would "still be very difficult to find military hardware smuggled in among consumer imports."

Many experts say sanctions must be part of a broader policy toward Iraq but the Bush administration, in office five months, has yet to spell one out.