U.N. Overhauls Iraq Sanctions

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved an overhaul of sanctions against Iraq on Tuesday in a victory for the United States with backing from Russia, Saddam Hussein's most important council ally.

The resolution aims to tighten the 11-year-old military embargo on Saddam's regime while easing the flow of civilian goods into Iraq.

The council's 15-0 vote extends the U.N. oil-for-food program for six months and represents the greatest change in the humanitaria program since it was launched in 1996 to help Iraq's people cope with sanctions imposed after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Under the current program, the U.N. committee monitoring sanctions must approve most contracts for humanitarian goods. But any of the 15 Security Council members can place a contract on hold.

More than $5 billion worth of contracts are currently on hold — about 90 percent by the United States and about 10 percent by Britain — on grounds that the goods have a potential military use. Iraq has criticized the Western allies for denying it crucial humanitarian supplies.

The newly adopted resolution contains a lengthy list of goods that would need U.N. review before shipment to Iraq, ranging from telecommunications and information technology equipment to sophisticated engineering items. But all other humanitarian goods can be freely imported by Iraq.

The vote capped months of negotiations between Russia, which wants sanctions against Iraq suspended, and the United States, which is committed to removing Saddam Hussein and has threatened to use force if he doesn't allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return.

"It will facilitate greatly the movement of humanitarian and purely civilian goods to the Iraq economy," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said. "By simplifying this export regime and focusing it more on products and services that could contribute to a weapons of mass destruction program, I think the regime has been made more effective."

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov agreed that it would make it easier to import humanitarian goods, but said "it is only through the lifting of the sanctions that Iraq can rebuild its economy."

Sanctions against Iraq cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors report that its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs have been dismantled along with the missiles to deliver them. Inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes in December 1998, and Iraq has barred them from returning, maintaining that its banned weapons programs have been eliminated.

Since March, Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has held two rounds of talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the return of inspectors, and a third round is expected, probably in late May.

The vote was delayed by 24 hours to give Syria time to consult its government after council experts rejected a series of Syrian amendments to the resolution.

One would have included a reference to a country's right to self-defense if attacked. It appeared aimed at responding to U.S. threats to topple Saddam Hussein. Wehbe said it was also aimed at the so-called "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq enforced by U.S. and British aircraft.

Before the vote, Syria's U.N. Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe said "it is high time to lift the sanctions" and he criticized the council's failure to get Israel to cooperate with a U.N. fact-finding mission into its attack on the Jenin refugee camp. Nonetheless, he said Syria had decided to join the consensus supporting the resolution to help the council "reconstruct and retrieve its credibility."

Under the revised oil-for-food system approved Tuesday, contracts for humanitarian goods ordered by Iraq would be sent to the U.N. office that runs the program. It would have 10 day to forward the contracts to the two U.N. agencies responsible for dismantling Iraq's banned weapons.

The two agencies — the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency — would, in turn, have 10 days to raise any objections.

Contracts for items not on the list would be automatically approved.

If either body identifies an item as objectionable, the contract would then be forwarded to the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions. The committee would decide whether to allow the item's purchase subject to monitoring, ask the supplier to substitute items, or reject it.