Oil Embargo

UNITED NATIONS -- Concern is rising at the United Nations over the human and financial cost of the embargoes the Security Council has imposed on Yugoslavia, Iraq and Haiti.While the leaders of those countries are responsible for the actions that led to the embargoes, it is common citizens who suffer the most. United Nations members are paying more than $800 million a year to ease the pain sanctions cause poor and vulnerable groups in those countries.The countries that traded most with Yugoslavia and Iraq, including Turkey and Jordan and struggling East European nations such as Hungary and Romania, say the Security Council's actions cost them billions of dollars of income for which they receive no compensation.

WASHINGTON -- North Korea has made significant new concessions to the United States, agreeing to allow international inspections of all seven of the nuclear facilities it has acknowledged inside its country, according to Clinton administration and South Korean officials.The concessions, made Monday in secret U.S.-North Korean talks in New York, could open the way for a resolution of the crisis over the country's nuclear program.Clinton administration officials have said that the United States and its allies might resort to trade sanctions such as an oil embargo if diplomacy fails.

DURING the Arab oil boycott of 1974, Americans were shocked to learn that more than one-third of their oil came from abroad. But now, half does. The U.S. and its allies won World War II because they had 90 percent of the oil reserves that went to war. The war was won on U.S. oil exports. Those days are long gone.What this can mean is shown by the shock to Americans when gasoline prices recently shot up more than a nickel a gallon after months of flat, low prices had created a false illusion of price security.

SAUDI ARABIA has America by the gas tank. Because we depend on it for oil, we've ignored the Saudis' use of our oil money to fund Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the Taliban, Hamas and even al-Qaida, according to recent reports by the New York Times and the New Yorker. That money trains three-quarters of a million jihad warriors in the Muslim religious schools of Pakistan. It even supports radical Islamic groups in the United States. The problem is that "Saudi Arabians may support Islamic terrorists, but America still needs oil," according to the New York Times.

Amid the great wave of political responses to rising gasoline prices - somewhere between the bonehead notions and the shameless pandering - one proposal stands out for the sheer breadth of its positive impact: demanding higher fuel efficiency from motor vehicles. That single step would make every dollar Americans spend on gas go further, reduce U.S. demand on global oil supplies and U.S. dependence on unstable oil-producing nations, lessen the impact of fossil fuels on global warming and curb pollutants that contribute to asthma and other ailments.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - For someone who is about to go out of business, Bane Andjelic seems awfully happy. When he voted for Vojislav Kostunica for president, he knew he was killing his food distribution business here because it was aimed at circumventing the economic sanctions that the European Union has lifted and that the United States says it will lift in return for Kostunica ousting Slobodan Milosevic's autocratic regime. But Andjelic, who runs a computer consulting firm in Boston and splits his time there and in Belgrade, did so willingly, figuring the reforms that would follow would create even more business opportunities in a new democratic Yugoslavia with a free market economy.

It will be no surprise if President Jean-Bertrand Aristide does not return to Haiti tomorrow. It is not news that Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, army commander and real ruler, has welshed on his promise of July 3 to step down tomorrow. If the popularly elected president returned to take power while the general held it, the president would probably be killed.General Cedras is defying the U.S. and the U.N. He is terrorizing the people of the country. He lied before and will probably lie again. He is no doubt inspired by General Mohamed Farah Aidid's defiance of the U.S. and the U.N. in Somalia.

Haiti is not Somalia. Instead of clan anarchy, it has government. In fact, it has two -- one legitimate, the other of military usurpers. Instead of peace-keeping, the role agreed upon for U.S. troops is humanitarian. Instead of being remote, Haiti is near Florida and Puerto Rico and is a source of unwanted immigration whenever hunger and atrocity get out of hand. There is a clear U.S. national interest in Haiti's well-being.The few dozen Haitian armed thugs who prevented the landing of North American noncombat troops from the U.S.S.

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States has refused to discuss its terms for lifting the oil embargo against Iraq directly with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz during his current visit to New York City, although representatives of the other 14 Security Council members have met informally with him, a senior administration official said yesterday.The official said there was no reason for the United States to meet with Mr. Aziz because he "already knows exactly where we stand." The official added that the United States would not consider lifting the ban on Iraqi oil sales until "we have a proven track record" of Iraqi compliance with the long-term monitoring of its military industries and Baghdad has complied with the Security Council's other disarmament demands.

Recent articles in your newspaper have shown the chaos, turmoil and revolutions happening in the Middle East, starting with Egypt, and spreading to other Middle East nations. The revolution in Egypt may turn for the worse as The Muslim Brotherhood has a strong probability of taking over, and this group is anti-Israel and anti-American. This, coupled with other extremist Islamic countries, poses a real danger to the USA by stopping the flow of oil to our country. With all of this turmoil happening, the gas prices are soaring at the pump along with food prices and other commodities.