Inside the same vicious circle

The Security Council's rejection of Washington's "smart sanctions" against Iraq is a victory for Baghdad, but has it brought the suffering of millions of Iraqis any closer to an end, asks Salah Hemeid
Last week the UN Security Council renewed for five months the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq after Britain and the United States faced a Russian veto threat to their plans to impose a new sanctions regime on the Arab country. The move came a month after the council agreed to extend the humanitarian programme for one month, instead of the usual six, to allow more time for negotiations on the Anglo-American plan.
American and British diplomats tried hard for weeks to push through the proposal, devised to revise the programme, but were faced with strong resistance from veto-wielding member Russia, as well as Iraq's neighbours -- Turkey, Syria and Jordan -- which heavily depend on bilateral trade with Iraq and cross-border oil smuggling.
In spite of personal intervention from both US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Russia threatened to veto the plan, arguing that any change in the sanctions must address the lifting of the 11-year embargo that has been blamed for the human sufferings of some 24 million Iraqis.
Iraq immediately claimed victory and, realising that the US and Britain have abandoned their fight only for now, vowed that it will bury any future resolution that does not include the total lifting of sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Following a meeting between President Saddam Hussein and some of his top officials on Sunday, the Iraqi leader said Washington and London will try to forge another plan to "isolate Iraq from the rest of humanity" and promised to make "Iraq's enemies regret it... like in all their previous defeats."
Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohamed Al-Douri, said his government has accepted the terms of a new Security Council resolution and will soon resume oil exports, which it halted on 4 June to protest the US- British "smart sanctions" proposal.
But the United States and Britain are adamant that the sanctions war is not yet over. Acting US Ambassador to the United Nations James Cunningham said London and Washington will use the coming months to press ahead with their plan and try to sway Russia. "We have made considerable progress and come too close to agreement to concede the field to Baghdad," Cunningham said. "We've won a lot of the battles in this process. We haven't yet won the war. But we're going to continue to go forward."
Britain's UN Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock blamed Russia for blocking "humanitarian improvements for the Iraqi people."
Despite the major setback, the two powers clearly do not want to concede defeat, at least publicly. With the five-month postponement, Baghdad has emerged with what it wanted for the short term -- the status quo. Iraq rejected the new sanctions regime because it considered it an attempt by the US to maintain and prolong the crippling economic embargo, while distancing themselves from its tragic consequences to ordinary Iraqis.
But many political observers believe that Baghdad's proclaimed victory could be premature and that the government is still far from meeting the expectations of millions of Iraqis to see a quick end to their long sufferings. On one hand, the Bush administration -- which has faced another snub in the Middle East with its failure to end Palestinian-Israeli ongoing confrontations -- is widely expected to start a re- evaluation of its leadership role in the region. "I don't think we've reached a dead end," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Friday. "We're not so hopeless as all that. Obviously this is difficult sledding." Yet many observers believe that hawkish administration officials will argue that the US should not send the Iraqi leader a wrong message by conceding to the Russian roadblock and will urge President Bush to regain the initiative on Iraq. Those officials, who have argued that even modified sanctions would have little effect on containing the Iraqi regime, will press for a tougher policy, including removing it from power.
Russia, on the other hand, has never said it wants to lift the sanctions, despite its eagerness for the sanctions to be lifted, largely to be able to resume lucrative oil deals with Iraq. It also wants Iraq to resume trading in oil so it could pay back billions of dollars in Soviet-era debt to Moscow. Despite Baghdad's assertion that it will boost cooperation with Russia in reward for its opposition, and although Russian lawmakers have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to use Russia's veto power at the Security Council to defeat any plan for tougher sanctions against Iraq, Moscow is believed to be weighing its strategic options in a way that will finally make a pragmatic compromise with Washington possible.
Recently, Beijing has moved closer to the American position on the new system of "smart sanctions." Earlier, China had been aligning itself with Russia's opposition to the administration plan. Press reports suggested that China softened its position after the United States dropped its objections to more than $80 million in frozen Chinese business deals with Iraq.
The American missteps -- widely blamed on Secretary of State Colin Powell who initiated the new Iraqi policy -- and the wrangling among Security Council members might have foiled the "smart sanctions," but the dogfight on the Iraqi front seems far from over. Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until UN inspectors certify that Iraq has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. But Baghdad still bars the inspectors from returning and maintains that it has eliminated its weapons programmes.
In the end, it seems all parties are still moving inside the same vicious circle that started 11 years ago and there is little appetite to strongly back what is essentially seen as the right of the Iraqi people to end their suffering.
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