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US policy on Iraq in disarray

Adel Darwish reports on how America's US policy on Iraq is slowly but surely falling apart.

A year later, despite a sustained air campaign against Iraq, there is little evidence that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has given up the idea of producing weapons of mass destruction, nor is he willing to comply with United Nations resolutions or let international inspectors monitor his weapons production sites. 

Meanwhile, the Iraqi opposition, thought to be the cornerstone of America's strategy to create internal subversion which might eventually lead to a palace coup against President Hussein, are nowhere to be seen. In the words of a senior British diplomat in the region: "American policy on Iraq is in disarray." 

The Iraqi president is reported to be increasingly amused by Washington's predicament, played out against a backdrop of international calls to lift the sanctions imposed by the UN after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. 

It is ordinary Iraqis who are paying the price - often with their lives - of sanctions that have had little effect on the regime America wants to replace. 

A meeting of high-ranking diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council was convened, at Washington's request, in London several weeks ago. The aim was to reach an agreement on a new UN resolution to ease off the sanctions. However, they were unable to agree on a draft resolution to become UN policy. 

The French have now openly joined the Russians and the Chinese in blaming the United States for unnecessarily prolonging the suffering of the people of Iraq. 

For months, Washington has been trying to get France, Russia and China to agree to a British-Dutch draft that calls for suspension of the sanctions in exchange for long-term close monitoring of Iraq's weapons programme. 

This would replace the UN inspection programme which collapsed last year when the US and Britain staged four days of punitive tomahawk missile and airstrikes against Baghdad for obstructing weapons inspectors. 

The London meeting yielded no results, except a decision to resume discussions in New York at foreign ministerial level. The hope had originally been to reach a compromise which could then be presented to the Iraqi leadership for compliance. 

All hoped for a Security Council resolution to establish a new mechanism to deal with Iraq, including a new weapons monitoring body to replace UNSCOM. Consequent easing of sanctions, it was said, would give Iraq more freedom to use its oil revenues for trade. 

Iraq has always rejected any new effort to return UN monitors, insisting that all its weapons programmes have already been dismantled. "Any resolution short of that will not be dealt with by Iraq," said the country's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. 

Mr Aziz was only too aware of Washington's visible predicament. A few weeks earlier, several Democrats in both the house of representatives and the upper house had been openly complaining about the administration's lack of policy on Iraq, and expressed concern about the effects of nine years of UN sanctions on Iraq. In defiance of the State Department, the Democrat congressmen sent representatives to Baghdad in September to investigate. 

American and British diplomatic manoeuvres also failed to dissuade Pope John Paul II from going ahead with his journey to the region, which will include a visit to Iraq, where he will almost certainly side with the suffering of ordinary Iraqis; the Pope has repeatedly called for the lifting of the sanctions. President Saddam will undoubtedly choose to maximise publicity during the visit. 

On the eve of the London Security Council members meeting, the US State Department published a report on Iraq -which had taken the department a year to prepare - that attracted near comic reactions. 

Entitled Saddam Hussein's Iraq the 13-page report was intended "to present the facts concerning Iraq", under the rule of the world's most infamous dictator. The report was also put on the State Department's website in Arabic and English to ensure the widest possible publicity. 

The report compiled a record of President Hussein's repression of his people, threats to the region and the obstruction of efforts to provide humanitarian relief for Iraqis under UN sanctions. It also included a list of fairly old grievances which involved the regime murdering its opponents, eliminating opposition leaders, draining southern marshes, destroying villages, relocating Shias and Kurds and carrying out summary and arbitrary executions. 

But what is new? Journalists have been reporting such atrocities for years; they attracted precious little attention when President Saddam was still armed and backed by the West during his eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. 

The only real new evidence is previously unseen aerial photos showing the destruction by the regime's forces against the Shia in the south and Kurds in the north. 

Others show weapons sites, reinforcing what The Middle East observed back in February, that Iraq remains both dangerous and defiant. 

"Whose fault is it that no one is monitoring Iraq's weapons' programme?" asked one former British ambassador in the region. "All experts warned that the four-day raids against Iraq last year would end the inspectors' mission once and for all." 

The State Department accuses Baghdad of obstructing the efficient operation of the oil-for-food programme, thus causing suffering for the Iraqi people and personal enrichment for the regime's leaders. However, the fact that Washington is powerless to do anything about the situation has resulted in barbed comments cloaked in the disguise of humour against the regime, and opened the door for criticism of government policy by its own allies. 

In late September, the French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine accused the US of insensitivity to disastrous suffering caused to the Iraqis by economic sanctions. "The United States is insensitive to the human catastrophe underway in Iraq," Mr Vedrine told reporters during his visit to New York for the General Assembly's annual debate. 

"Iraq is not just made up of Saddam Hussein alone, he said. "A whole society is being destroyed." 

The French believe that although Iraq does not pose any threat now, it could do so again if left unchecked. Vedrine said a new monitoring system was needed to prevent President Hussein reviving his programmes to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. 

The US backs Britain and the Netherlands, who want to ease the cap on Iraqi oil exports and suspend sanctions on some imports for a few months, under strict United Nations supervision. France, Russia and China have generally balked at the resolution as being too inflexible. 

Mr Vedrine seemed to be positioning France as a bridge between the United States and Britain on one side, and Russia and China on the other. "If the US and Britain agreed on a joint position with France, Mr Vedrine said, "the Russians and the Chinese will also agree with us". 

Last year, Congress passed a law granting $97 million worth of military equipment to Iraqi groups trying to topple President Saddam. The State Department duly named seven factions worthy of such largesse, and even persuaded them to coalesce into a newly revitalised umbrella group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). 

A long awaited meeting of the INC parliament-in-exile, for the first time in seven years, has never materialised. 

Iraqi opposition sources say they are co-operating with the State Department to start a war-crimes investigation against President Hussein. Critics of this idea say it will only make him more defiant and more aggressive. 

Many question the idea of whether more military action can ever be effective. Since last December's four-day campaign, the accumulation of US and British air raids against Iraq makes them nearly as many as those launched against Serbia by NATO. Despite the US's best efforts both presidents - Milosovic and Saddam - are still in power.