Baghdad shifts diplomatic gears

The recent cabinet shuffle in Iraq signals that Saddam Hussein is rethinking his foreign policy, writes Salah Hemeid
In a surprise move last week, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein removed his foreign minister, Mohamed Said Al-Sahhaf, and tapped Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz to serve in the post temporarily. He also named Iraq's ambassador to Austria, Naji Sabri Al-Hadithi, state minister for foreign affairs, a new post he created apparently to strengthen Iraq's diplomatic corps.
Although Al-Sahhaf, a long trusted aide, was not completely dumped (he is now information minister), the shuffle is surely significant. In a country where decision-making is surreptitious and where there is no public debate about policy, any shuffle of major posts must raise questions about timing, significance and outcome. Noticeably, the shuffle came a few weeks after an Arab summit in Amman, Jordan, which commentators, including Oday, Saddam Hussein's son, held to be a failure for Iraqi diplomacy. At the summit, the Iraqi negotiating team vehemently rejected a final communiqué that called for an ease of the embargo and also asked Iraq to reaffirm its commitment to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Kuwait. Observers were bemused by the Iraqi team's move.
Most observers agree that, if approved, the draft communiqué, which also called for an end to American-British bombing in the two no-fly zones, would have been a major diplomatic success for Iraq. But instead of endorsing the statement, which was supported by all the 21 other Arab League members, the Iraqi delegation opposed the communiqué and Iraq again ended in the opposite trench to the countries to whom it had looked for support.
Iraq refused the formula on the grounds that any reiteration of its respect of Kuwait's sovereignty implies that Iraq is still untrustworthy. The Iraqi rejection was perplexing because the draft resolution did not require Baghdad to do much beyond showing good-will to its southern neighbour.
Babil, the outspoken newspaper owned by Saddam's eldest son Oday, was just as bewildered by the delegation's moves. In an editorial which it is believed that Oday himself wrote, the paper argued that the foreign ministry team headed by Al-Sahhaf did not follow Saddam's instructions. The editorial said that Saddam told the team to avoid discussing the lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq. He ordered them to concentrate instead on the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation. It wasn't the first time Al-Sahhaf and the foreign ministry have come under fire from the president's son; but blaming the minister and his team for flouting Saddam's orders was serious enough to cast doubts over Al-Sahhaf's political future.
Whether or not Al-Sahhaf and his team damaged Baghdad's efforts to have sanctions lifted, Iraqi diplomacy seems at a crossroads. The Amman summit proved that although Arab states are ready to support demands to ease sanctions, they are still far from forgetting the disastrous consequences of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
The Bush administration's determination to impose what it calls "smart" sanctions has also dealt a severe blow to Saddam's dream that the embargo may finally have reached the verge of collapse. The "smart" sanctions aim to ease the distress of the Iraqi people, yet keep pressure on their ruler. If reports about the success of US Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker in convincing Iraq's neighbours to accept the smart sanctions are accurate, the new sanctions regime could be imposed within weeks and would make life for the Iraqi leader much harder. Saddam has plenty of cause to worry: such sanctions seem designed to be permanent so long as he remains in power. The failures at Amman mean that Saddam may have missed an opportunity to line up allies against sanctions. Those failures may explain Saddam's apparent ire with his foreign ministry.
Experts now believe that the shuffle was meant to put the entire operation of the foreign ministry under Aziz, a veteran politician and diplomat who always promoted a nicer image of the regime. But Aziz will have to face many daunting challenges, both reorganising the ministry he once headed and surmounting the failure of his predecessor to build on 10 years of diplomatic efforts to have sanctions lifted.
These are agonising days for the Iraqi president and his country. The planes that used to land at Baghdad's airport carrying politicians and businessmen demonstrating solidarity have disappeared. Lucrative oil smuggling through the Gulf is being checked. Iran is launching routine missile attacks on positions inside Iraq. And the United States vows to make life pricklier for the regime. With all these woes, Iraq may need more than a cabinet shuffle to end the embargo and Iraq's international isolation.
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Whither Iraq? 12 - 18 April 2001
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