The Iraq oil deal

Iraq's signing of the oil-for-food deal seems to have the international community grinning from ear to ear.

The U.S. delegate to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, heralded it as "an excellent day for the people of the Iraq, who have not been able to get the requisite amount of food and medicine because of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's priorities".

Perhaps so, but just days before the agreement was signed, the United States and Britain attempted to intervene in the negotiations, arguing that the accord offered Hussein loopholes through which he could redirect funds away from humanitarian relief into the military. So why the sudden change of face?

One would hope that Iraq's post-sanction 40 percent infant mortality rate would have played a major role in the decision. One would also hope that the reason is that six years of vise- like economic sanctions have done nothing more than leave the Iraqi population in a stranglehold.

Topping the list of reasons for the U.S. about-face is the fact that high oil prices have become a heated campaign issue plaguing U.S. President Bill Clinton in his bid for re-election.

Providing more incentive was a part of the agreement dictating that the UN will distribute supplies to the Iraqi Kurds, bitter opponents of Hussein's regime.

The simple truth of the matter, however, is that the sanctions did not work.

It may have taken the world six years to stumble upon the realization that sanctions will fail where negotiations will succeed, but for the Iraqi population, it was a lesson learned all too quickly and painfully.

-- al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo