Britain and US propose lifting Iraq import controls
Britain and the United States are proposing that most controls on Iraqi imports be lifted, except for specific military-related items, to ease the suffering of civilians and strengthen the effectiveness of weapons-related sanctions, diplomats said today.
‘‘This will mean Iraq will be free to meet all its legitimate civilian needs from food to car parts,’’ said a British official. ‘‘But controls will be retained, hopefully with a renewed and strengthened international consensus, on military and weapons-related goods, which would allow the Iraqi regime to threaten its people and its neighbours.’’
Under the United Nations oil-for-food programme Iraq is allowed to sell oil provided that the money goes primarily for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, as well as equipment to rebuild its frayed oil infrastructure.
The programme was launched in 1996 to help Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed to punish Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
As part of the programme, virtually all goods going into Iraq had to go through a UN approval process, even though some were on a pre-approved list.
This led to long delays in getting goods to Iraq, and the West was repeatedly criticised by Baghdad for the humanitarian suffering of the Iraqi people.
The US-British proposal would let all goods into Iraq unless they were on a list of controlled items, which means they would be subject to scrutiny by the UN Security Council committee that monitors Iraq sanctions, the British official said.
Under the proposal, the sanctions committee would then do one of three things: approve the item subject to inspection to ensure it was being used for the purpose stated; deny the import; or in cases of contracts with a number of items there could be a line-item veto.
The US-British proposal would still require all Iraqi imports to be subject to UN financial controls, with suppliers receiving payments from a UN-controlled escrow account, the British official said.
Acting US ambassador James Cunningham said Wednesday that ‘‘our intention is to focus the discussion on the security problem that the sanctions regime and the Security Council resolutions addressed, so we’re looking at the arms material technologies involved’’.
President George W Bush’s administration has been conducting a major review of US policy toward Iraq.
Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was seeking a UN sanctions regime that would punish its leaders without hurting its people.
He said the administration wanted ‘‘to revise the sanctions policy so that it is directed exclusively at preventing Iraq from a military build-up and developing weapons of mass destruction and to do it in a way that does not hurt the people of Iraq, but just the regime in Baghdad’’.
Under UN resolutions, sanctions cannot be lifted until UN weapons inspectors certify that Iraq’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles used to deliver them have been eliminated. UN inspectors left Iraq ahead of US and British air strikes in December 1998 but Baghdad has barred them from returning.
The current six-month phase of the oil-for-food programme expires on June 4, and US and British officials said they hope these proposals will be incorporated into the resolution extending it.
