Sanctions Against Iraq

THE resignations should be a wake-up call for Washington. Hans Von Sponeck, the United Nation's assistant secretary general and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, announced his resignation last week after 15 months on the job, because he became convinced that "every month, Iraq's social fabric shows bigger holes." The next day, the chief of the U.N.'s World Food Program in Baghdad, Jutta Burghardt, quit as well, also to protest how the economic sanctions against Iraq are eroding its society.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen kidnapped the head of the CARE humanitarian group in Iraq, a British-born woman in her 60s who has been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has worked for three decades to improve living conditions here. The kidnapping of Margaret Hassan yesterday triggered appeals for her release from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Muslim humanitarian groups. Hassan's abduction occurred on a day when militants fired mortar rounds at an Iraqi National Guard base north of the capital, killing five soldiers and wounding 80. An American contractor working for a Halliburton unit died in a mortar attack on a U.S. base in Baghdad, news agencies reported.

NEW CANAAN, Conn. -- Inside a two-story building in this leafy suburb, a staff of 60 is overseeing an American air invasion of Iraq.This week, AmeriCares, a private relief agency, is running what government officials say is the first American-led humanitarian mission to Iraq since the Persian Gulf war in 1991: a three-day airlift that will bring 80,000 pounds of medical supplies to Baghdad by tomorrow.AmeriCares' airlift is one of a growing number of efforts by Americans and U.S. nonprofit groups to circumvent the nearly 8-year-old U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

PARIS - Seeking to put months of trans-Atlantic acrimony behind it, the United Nations Security Council voted overwhelmingly yesterday to lift sanctions against Iraq and grant the United States and Britain broad powers to rule the devastated nation until a new Iraqi government can take over. Despite misgivings expressed by several member states, the Security Council voted 14-0 to release the Iraqi people from the burden of economic sanctions originally imposed to punish Saddam Hussein, the deposed Iraqi strongman, for invading Kuwait in 1990.

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Iraq reached agreement yesterday with Iran to restore full diplomatic relations, thereby easing Iraq's international isolation and giving it new hope of undermining the economic sanctions blocking imports of arms and food.And in a televised message broadcast in his name, Saddam Hussein offered to supply oil free of charge to Third World countries, to demonstrate what Mr. Hussein said was Iraq's solidarity with the poor.The Iraqi president's spokesman said that since the oil was being offered at no cost, it should not be subject to the United Nations sanctions prohibiting trade with Iraq.

WASHINGTON -- Yesterday's tragedy over Iraq puts a harsh spotlight on the United States' determination to keep punishing Saddam Hussein's regime at a time when that policy is already under strain.Driven by commercial and political self-interest, France, Russia and even a couple of Persian Gulf monarchies have begun to retreat from a U.S.-led coalition that since 1991 has blocked any easing of sanctions against Iraq or the strict enforcement of no-fly zones innorthern and southern Iraq.The commercial embargo is what has prevented Baghdad from emerging anew as a major oil exporter.

WASHINGTON - Acknowledging that U.S. credibility is on the line, the Bush administration is considering enlisting United Nations weapons inspectors to verify any discovery by American military teams of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The role that U.N. inspectors should now play in Iraq, if any, is expected to be sharply debated in a closed-door Security Council meeting today, when inspections chief Hans Blix gives his first report since before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The United States has no intention of giving the United Nations a major role in the search for Iraq's banned weapons, which is already being conducted by U.S. military teams and experts and will be bolstered in coming weeks by hundreds of additional people, officials said.

WASHINGTON -- Opening the first crack in the tight economic sanctions imposed on Iraq 5 1/2 years ago, the United Nations agreed yesterday to let Baghdad resume selling oil on the world market to help feed and care for a desperate civilian population.It was the first loosening of sanctions against Iraq since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the Persian Gulf war the next year.Oil prices dropped, then rose again as the market reacted. Analysts predicted that the additional oil eventually would dampen prices for crude oil, perhaps resulting in lower prices at the gas pump.

The World Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a longtime member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle, surrendered to U.S. troops. France proposed an end to civilian sanctions against Iraq but said the embargo could not formally end until the United Nations certified that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Two members of the news media were being investigated amid accusations of taking looted souvenirs out of Iraq. Several U.S. servicemen were investigated in the disappearance of as much as $900,000 of the more than $600 million discovered in Baghdad.

WASHINGTON -- Iraq defied the United Nations' midnight deadline for withdrawal from Kuwait, erasing nearly all hope for a diplomatic alternative to war despite a final pledge last evening by the U.N. secretary-general to make "every effort" to address the Palestinian conflict.The passage of the deadline freed the United States and its principal allies, which have committed themselves politically to enforcing 12 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to drive Iraq from Kuwait by force.[Early this morning, President Bush issued a statement reiterating past U.S. pronouncements.