Iraqi Oil

WASHINGTON -- Near-record oil and gasoline prices caused President Clinton to flood the oil market with federally stockpiled oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve late last week. The SPR holds 582 million barrels of unrefined crude oil, a stock large enough to replace 37 percent of oil imports for 90 days. Mr. Clinton did the right thing: It's time to pump that oil into the marketplace. The main objection is that the reserve should remain untouched in case of an embargo or other supply disruption.

WASHINGTON - After a stiff, two-month crackdown on illegal Iraqi oil shipments in the Persian Gulf, Iran is allowing renewed smuggling activity, puzzling U.S. officials who had hoped to extinguish a key financing source for Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. "The activity's picked up again in the last two weeks," said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jeff Gradeck, a spokesman for the gulf-based allied naval force that is enforcing the United Nations trade sanctions against Iraq. "Why [Iran has] opened it up and to what extent I don't know."

WASHINGTON -- On a still night earlier this month, a Navy Seahawk helicopter sped across the dark waters of the Gulf of Oman and hovered above the Russian-flag commercial oil tanker Volganeft, anchored just off the United Arab Emirates. Suddenly 10 SEALs -- black-clad commandos carrying M-16 rifles and machine guns -- clambered up to the deck and rounded up the crew. Scrambling up to the bridge, the commandos found documents claiming that the 4,000 metric tons of oil on board -- the equivalent of 29,200 barrels -- had been pumped in Iran.

THE UNITED NATIONS last week temporarily lifted its oil embargo against Iraq, allowing the country to sell $2 billion worth of oil to buy food and medicine. OPEC nations meeting in Vienna refused to cut output to accommodate Iraqi's first exports in six years and instead raised the cartel's daily production ceiling by a half million barrels to 25 million and added 800,000 barrels to Iraq's allocation. OPEC members routinely exceed their quotas and the cartel actually produced 26.1 million barrels a day last month; the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates demand for OPEC oil will remain unchanged at 24.5 million barrels a day for the rest of the year.

GENEVA -- The suspension of talks between Iraq and the United Nations last week was especially bitter news for Carlos Alzamora.For more than four years, this former Peruvian diplomat and his team of experts have been collecting and sifting the claims of more than 2 million people who say they were hurt in some way -- economically, physically or psychologically -- by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.Thirty percent of the money that would have been collected from the sale of Iraqi oil that might have come out of the talks would have flowed into the nearly empty coffers of Mr. Alzamora's compensation fund, at the rate of about $100 million a month.

The definitive verdict on American policy toward Iraq depends on what happens next -- or what doesn't happen next. If Saddam Hussein keeps his elite troops above the 32nd parallel and does not again threaten Kuwait, President Clinton comes out a winner in facing down the Baghdad dictator through swift redeployment of U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf. If the U.N. Security Council does not lift the oil embargo strangling the Iraqi economy until all U.S. demands are met, including some add-ons, this too can be interpreted as a triumph in the use of U.S. military might.

UNITED NATIONS -- Hardening its position toward Saddam Hussein's government, the Clinton administration wants to impose new requirements for lifting the United Nations ban on Iraqi oil exports.The United States is urging other members of the U.N. Security Council to insist that Baghdad recognize Kuwait as an independent country and stop persecuting dissident Kurds and Shiite Muslims.These conditions would be in addition to the Security Council's demands, made at the end of the Persian Gulf war, that Iraq disarm and let the United Nations monitor its military industries.

Proposed stockbroker disclosureStockbrokers who are paid to steer orders to firms that trade stocks away from the big exchange floors would be required to disclose the payments to investors under rules proposed by federal regulators.The rule was suggested by the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission as a way to help investors get the best deals when trading stocks.French official takes on trade rivalsForeign Minister Alain Juppe accused France's trade rivals of "intellectual terrorism" yesterday and expressed doubt that a Dec. 15 deadline for a new world trade pact could be met.Efforts to conclude the pact have been jeopardized by France's adamant opposition to a U.S.-European Community farm trade accord that would cut subsidies to farmers.

WASHINGTON -- Two and a half years after the West and its Arab allies went to war to keep Saddam Hussein from controlling the world's oil markets, the Iraqi president is again sending jitters through oil producers and their governments.The markets are jumpy over the consequences of a one-time, $1.6 million Iraqi oil sale the United Nations is considering to allow Baghdad to finance humanitarian needs and war reparations.There also is concern among oil analysts and within the U.S. government that the spigot will be hard to turn off, particularly as the U.N. humanitarian-aid coffers are desperately short of cash.

WASHINGTON -- In another burst of impatience with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the U.N. Security Council ordered the seizure of frozen Iraqi oil assets yesterday to help pay for that which Iraq owes the United Nations under the cease-fire resolutions that ended the Persian Gulf War.By a 14-0 vote, with China abstaining, the Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored resolution that details a complicated method for nations to deal with Iraqi oil and with...