ARABS-US RELATIONS - Mar. 25 - Policy Towards Iraq Criticised.

Friends and foes publicly criticise the US for its Iraq policy, saying the Iraqi people were suffering largely because of the US hard line on sanctions. In a heated Security Council debate the US counters that Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein was to blame for any hardships because he had prolonged sanctions by refusing to give up his weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, Deputy US Ambassador James Cunningham says the US would try to improve its record in implementing the UN humanitarian program for Iraq, which allows Baghdad to sell its oil through UN-monitored sales. Cunningham tells the Security Council Washington is releasing US$100m of the more than US$1 bn in contracts for equipment purchases it had blocked and is reviewing ways to process contracts faster. He says the US was also ready to approve a doubling in the amount of spare parts Iraq can buy to repair its dilapidated oil industry. While the initiatives are welcomed, nearly every council ambassador says the US had to do more to enable the UN oil-for-food program to better care for Iraqis, who have lived under sanctions for nearly a decade.

French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte says: "This 'embargo generation' is a lost generation". Malaysian Ambassador Agam Hasmy says: "How ironic is it that the same policy that is supposed to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction has itself become a weapon of mass destruction - the deaths of innocent children". (Iraq has been barred from selling oil on the open market since sanctions were imposed after its invasion of Kuwait. The UN oil-for-food program was launched in 1996 to provide for Iraqis suffering under the measures, which cannot be lifted until Iraq has rid itself of its weapons of mass destruction. While more than US$6.7 bn worth of goods have arrived in Iraq since the relief program began, the US has held up over US$1 bn in contracts for equipment to rebuild Iraq's aging electricity, oil and water industries.)

Washington says it wants to make sure the equipment isn't used to help Saddam rebuild his weapons of mass destruction. But several ambassadors, even those more friendly to Washington, say the US was taking its concerns too far, no matter how legitimate the threat of so-called "dual-use" imports. Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler says, in urging the US to better weigh the humanitarian impact of its policies: "Dual-use concerns need to be kept focused and realistic". (Most of the criticism levelled at the US, however, come from countries more friendly with Baghdad.) Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov says it was "inadmissible" to think that Iraq would resume co-operation with weapons inspectors with almost daily US and British airstrikes in the northern and southern no-fly zones. Even Secretary-General Kofi Annan indirectly criticises the US in his speech. He says: "We are in danger of losing the argument or the propaganda war - if we haven't already lost it - about who is responsible for the situation: Pres. Saddam Hussein or the UN".