Cosmetic changes likely in sanctions on Iraq

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), FEB. 21. Iraq has described U.S. and British proposals to review and if necessary, change the existing system of sanctions as ``poison'', but this response was predictable since Iraq is preparing for comprehensive talks with the U.N. on this issue. What would be more interesting to see is whether the U.S. and its ally are only working on cosmetic changes to reduce the widespread criticism of their hardline stance towards Iraq.

According to the reports, the U.S. and Britain are to consider the ways by which they can more effectively ensure that Iraq is never able to re-build a weapon of mass destruction capability. They are also seeking ways to ensure that the Iraqi regime is permanently deprived of the ability to commit aggression against its own people or against other countries of the region. It is envisaged that these steps to ratchet up the pressure on the Iraqi regime will be accompanied by measures to ease the general economic sanctions that have caused so much hardship to the Iraqi people. The U.S. and British officials are expected to discuss these matters tomorrow ahead of the meeting between the U.S. President, Mr. George W Bush and the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair on Friday.

Theoretically, it should be possible to refine the policy so as to make the application of sanctions more targeted and specific. There is already a system in place for countries around the world to notify the U.N. about any sales or exports to Iraq and a U.N. committee supervises all purchases by Iraq. In the context it might be only a matter of requiring strict reporting of the sale of weapons, weapons materiel or dual use technologies. No systemic change will really be required but international co- operation might be more forthcoming if the world community perceived that the only objective was that of ensuring that Iraq does not re-develop a WMD capability or build up such a capability as to be a threat to its neighbours.

There is far more widespread support for the view that the Iraqi President, Mr. Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction since he is known to have used them before. It is also theoretically possible to ease the general economic sanctions without dismantling the supervisory mechanism. The U.N. has a system of ``pre-approval'' as per which trade in specific items do not need to be routed through the supervisory mechanism. It should be possible to broaden the list of items in the ``pre-approval'' list and remove the restrictions on the Iraqi consumers and international suppliers of these items.

According to some reports, Iraqi private traders will also be allowed to trade more freely with Jordan and other neighbouring States. However, the plan to interdict dual use materiel and technologies can still create problems. In the past, the sanctions monitoring committee has even stopped the import of pencils into Iraq on the grounds that the lead in them could be put to dual uses.

The Iraqis have made credible claims that the U.S. and U.K. have used their role in the sanctions monitoring mechanism to conjure the devil out of the details in order to interdict all manner of agreements. The supervisory mechanism is after all a bureaucratic process and it is difficult to ascertain what is going into it and what is coming out.

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Section  : International
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