Economic Sanctions

WASHINGTON -- Tacitly acknowledging that the U.S. campaign to contain Iraq is collapsing, the Clinton administration will support a proposal next week to ease economic sanctions against Baghdad and dilute efforts to monitor Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.The proposal would remove the limits on Iraqi oil sales permitted under a United Nations-administered program, U.S. and U.N. officials said. The oil sales proceeds are used to buy food and humanitarian supplies for the Iraqi people.

WASHINGTON -- The United States said yesterday that it had new evidence showing that President Saddam Hussein had spent money to build a sprawling amusement park to entertain his political followers instead of feeding hungry Iraqis.In a report intended to convince other governments to retain tough economic sanctions against Iraq, the State Department said the entertainment complex was detected in aerial photographs."Despite its claims that the people of Iraq are dying due to a lack of food and medicine, Saddam Hussein doesn't hesitate to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the entertainment of Baath Party officials and cadres," said James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman.

THE PRESSURE is now on the United States to end the unilateral sanctions it slapped on Libya in 1981 for alleged support of terrorism.It should consider doing so, following the lead of Britain, which on Wednesday ended the sanctions it imposed in 1984, after gunfire from inside the Libyan embassy in London killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher, who was keeping order at a demonstration outside.Further ensuring Libya's pariah status were United Nations sanctions inhibiting air travel and investment in Libya's oil industry.

PRESIDENT Clinton has changed our TV channel from war in Iraq to the new war raging in Kosovo. But we should not lose sight of the continuing military and humanitarian tragedy in Iraq. In a clear breach of the goals of U.N. Resolution 687 -- the 1991 Iraqi cease-fire and sanctions resolution -- new weapons are being shipped, escalating tensions and threatening further death and destruction in the unstable and arms-bloated Middle East.But this time it's the United States, not Iraq, that is undermining international law and standing in violation of the resolution Washington drafted and guided to Security Council passage.

WASHINGTON -- In the meadow of the president's mind, in the untended portion where foreign policy thoughts sprout randomly, this flower recently bloomed concerning the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests: "I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th century."What mistakes did he mean? Having nuclear weapons? Were it not for them, scores of thousands of Americans would have died in 1945 ending the fighting in the Pacific.

MOSCOW -- Small countries that border Russia have never been in an enviable position, and when Moscow starts to throw its weight around it means just one thing: trouble.Trouble came to Georgia in February, and to Latvia and Norway in March. A new assertiveness is stirring in Russia, and the neighbors better watch out."Russia was disoriented for several years, and it had very little respect for itself," says Dmitri Trenin, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. "That can't go on forever."

WASHINGTON -- In the summer of 1991, Americans lined the streets of the nation's capital to cheer the soldiers who had driven back the Iraqi aggressors and gape in awe at a 7-block parade of high-tech weaponry used to enforce what George Bush dubbed a "new world order."Amid the patriotic pageantry, many people overlooked the beginning of a scary experiment: Instead of overrunning Iraq and toppling the vanquished Saddam Hussein, the United States and its allies chose to watch him and contain him, using economic sanctions, inspectors and scientists.

WASHINGTON -- Bureaucratic logjams, Iraqi foot-dragging and deep-seated distrust hobble the United Nations' oil-for-food deal with Iraq, prolonging the suffering of millions.A year after Iraq was allowed to begin selling limited amounts of oil to buy food and medicine, no one is satisfied -- not U.N. officials, who say it fails to eradicate the causes of Iraqi hunger and disease; not the Iraqi people, who complain of inadequate and poor quality supplies; and not the United States, which is widely blamed in the Arab world for Iraqi misery from sanctions imposed for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

An article in the Perspective section Dec. 7, "Two flaws exist in U.S. policy toward Iraq," suggested that Syria's dominance in Lebanon is a violation of United Nations resolutions. In fact, Syria's presence in Lebanon was requested by the Lebanese government, and the United Nations was never asked to consider it.The Sun regrets the error.THE LATEST skirmish between Iraq and the United States, while provoked by Saddam Hussein's expulsion of Americans on the United Nations monitoring team, demonstrates two fundamental flaws in U.S. policy.

WASHINGTON -- As American diplomats try to rebuild the once-powerful coalition that drove Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, they are being undercut at almost every turn.Russia declared its adamant opposition yesterday to the use of force against Iraq, and China appeared to agree.Egypt highlighted the general Arab unhappiness with the United States by announcing that it would boycott a U.S.-promoted Middle East economic conference.And France, while critical of Iraq, granted Baghdad's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, a high-level meeting in Paris while he was en route to the United Nations on Sunday.