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U.S. And Britain Delay "Smart" Sanctions On Iraq
WASHINGTON, May 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. and Britain said Thursday they were putting off a plan to change the system of U.N. sanctions against Iraq as the five members of the Security Council said they would still back a reform of the 11-year-old embargo, news agencies reported.
According to news reports, the 15-member Security Council will instead be asked to extend present oil-for-food arrangements, which are due to expire Sunday.
The members are still arguing over the length of the extension, as the U.S. and Britain say they want only a thirty-day extension, while Russia and China, two countries that have trade relations with Baghdad, say they want at least six more months. France is proposing a compromise of only three months.
The French news agency AFP reported, however, that the five permanent Security Council members have reached an agreement on a proposal to reform the sanctions and to implement it one month from now, the agency quoted a Western diplomat as saying.
The diplomat said the five were united behind a draft resolution which expresses the council's "intention to consider new arrangements" for the trade embargo on Iraq between now and July 3rd.
If adopted, the draft resolution will extend the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq until that date while the Council discusses the new arrangements.
Washington and London have called the new set of embargo rules "smart sanctions" as they seek to keep the embargo from hurting ordinary Iraqis and try and focus them on preventing Iraq from obtaining robust military capabilities, or possessing weapons-making equipment.
Iraq rejected the new proposal and described them as "stupid sanctions". Baghdad said it would stop its oil exports if the new sanctions were approved.
Each of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - the council's permanent members - has veto power.
The BBC's online service quoted commentators as saying that the delay was a major setback for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who made revising the sanctions a high priority as he took office in January.
A U.S. official said that during talks in Budapest between Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Russians asked for more time for their experts to go through the details of prohibited items.
Powell said he was optimistic that the controversy would soon be resolved. He said there was "general agreement" that the crippling sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 had "lost some of their effectiveness".
International support for the embargo has dwindled amid a growing perception that they hurt the Iraqi people more than President Saddam Hussein, whom Western countries say the sanctions were originally intended to target.
The U.S. and its allies are reported to be facing difficulties persuading Turkey, Syria and Jordan, to give up their profits from a lucrative trade in Iraqi oil.
Iraq has urged its neighbors not to go along with the proposed plans. The official Iraqi News Agency (INA), on its web site, said Thursday that the aim of the British-proposed system was to "to suffocate the Iraqi economy at the time it begun to grow despite the obstacles of the embargo."
INA reported that Iraq called on its neighbors not "to deal with the sanctions draft so as not to lose their neighbor, Iraq, in the face of desperate pressures and false temptations."
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