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Iraq Rejecting Call For "Smart Sanctions"
BAGHDAD, Feb 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to silence Arab anger and seek support to maintain the embargo imposed on Iraq during his whirlwind visit through the Middle East on Tuesday, a high-ranking Iraqi official said.
"The trip was designed to absorb the anger of the Arab masses against upholding sanctions in Iraq and the U.S. position on the Palestinian issue," Iraqi under-secretary of state for foreign affairs Nabil Nejm told Al-Rafidain weekly newspaper.
Nejm slammed the newly appointed Powell for repeating a "new lie" that Iraq was "threatening children" in the region.
"It is deplorable that the country that pretends to run the world is lying," Nejm said, accusing the United States of looking to "hold back changes that have happened in Iraq's favor over the past two years."
The new U.S. approach involves apparently re-targeting sanctions by tightening restrictions on Iraq's leadership while easing those on its people, reports the BBC.
Powell told BBC that one way of reducing shortages in Iraq was for Washington to look again at its criteria for blocking the sales of items with a possible military use.
Iraq has witnessed an erosion of the crippling sanctions regime imposed on it after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Tougher sanctions against military shipments to Iraq will be matched by an easing of measures that impact directly on Iraqi civilians, Powell said Tuesday.
Denouncing the "persistence of the U.S. hostility towards Iraq", Nejm said Washington "will try to intensify efforts in the coming days to contain these changes."
At the end of his tour of the region Monday, Powell said he had found a consensus in the region for modified sanctions that would ease restrictions on civilian goods but strengthen those on military products.
CNN adds that the U.N. sanctions program was designed to force Iraq to destroy its ability to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction.
And a senior U.S. State Department official said that Washington hoped to be able to have a proposal on modifying at least some U.N. sanctions on Iraq ahead of the next Arab League meeting in Jordan on March 27th.
Speaking to reporters on his way into a meeting with European Commission President Romano Prodi, Powell said the Bush administration was determined to keep world pressure on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"If we move forward with the proposals that I have been shopping around the [Middle East] region, we will tighten sanctions on weapons of mass destruction, on material, on armaments, on all those sorts of equipment that put people in the region at risk," Powell said.
"What we would do then is to remove some of the restrictions on materials that can go to civilians, so that he [Saddam] will no longer have the excuse of saying we are hurting the Iraqi people, when the intent has been to contain his appetite for weapons of mass destruction."
Powell was in Brussels for a brief NATO foreign ministers' meeting, following his first Middle East mission during which he urged Iraq's neighbors to continue support for U.N. sanctions imposed 10 years ago in the aftermath of the Gulf war.
"We have had some success in the last two days in discussions with the frontline states in the region to tighten up on [Saddam's] ability to smuggle out things," Powell said.
But "at the end of the day," he said, it is up to Saddam whether or not to bow to sanctions and let U.N. inspectors back into his country to probe Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
Sanctions against Iraq are supposed to remain in place until Baghdad complies with demands to dismantle its ability to produce weapons of mass destruction to the satisfaction of U.N. inspectors, CNN reports.
Iraqi officials ruled out letting the arms inspectors return during talks Monday at the United Nations in New York.
"If they don't come back in, then the conditions set by the United Nations will not be met, and [Saddam] will consider himself still trapped in the box that he has constructed for himself," Powell said.
Describing new parameters for proposed sanctions, Powell said, "There are lots of ways to describe this idea. Some have said they are going to be 'smart' sanctions. Some have said they are going to be reenergized sanctions."
"But what we are really going to see are strengthened sanctions against the threats that the sanctions were intended to deal with in the first place," he said.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Said Al-Sahaf later Tuesday called Powell's proposals to loosen sanctions on Iraqi civilians while tightening other controls "stupid," CNN reports.
Al-Sahaf said, "We are hearing stupid statements from the foreign minister of America talking about clever sanctions ... so there is no place for compromise."
He also denied that Iraq was pumping oil through Syria. "Ask the Syrians, because there is no pumping of oil from Iraq to Syria," he said.
Al-Sahaf was reacting to comments made by Powell saying that he had reached an agreement with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to place into a U.N. escrow account any revenue Iraq might be receiving from oil flowing through Syrian pipelines.
CNN reports that Al-Sahaf called the suggestion that Iraq might be pumping oil through Syria, "allegations" and "propaganda."
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