U.S. Lawmakers Vote to Punish Iraq : Foreign affairs: Citing Hussein’s bleak human rights record, they overwhelmingly approve stiff trade sanctions.

The House and the Senate voted overwhelmingly Friday to impose trade sanctions against Iraq, whose ruler was denounced by lawmakers in both chambers as a “mad dog” and a “butcher” with a human rights record so bleak that it can no longer be ignored by U.S. policy-makers.

In twin moves that reflected growing congressional anger over increasingly threatening behavior by Iraq, bipartisan majorities attached Iraqi sanctions to a 1990 farm bill that was later passed by the Senate but is still being debated in the House.

With the Bush Administration opposed to trade sanctions and prospects for the farm bill still clouded by the threat of presidential veto, the future of the legislation remains uncertain. But supporters of the sanctions said Friday’s votes should add to the pressure being felt by the Administration to take a more forceful position against Iraq and the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

The Senate, approving an amendment offered by Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), took what was by far the tougher stance. It voted 83 to 12 to cut off credit guarantees for Iraqi purchases of agricultural products and to ban the sale of military equipment, including so-called dual-use technology, which is intended for civilian use but which could have military applications.

Citing Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villages and its attempts to develop nuclear weapons, the Senate bill also instructed President Bush to assess the economic consequences of a U.S. boycott of Iraqi oil.

“He’s no president,” D’Amato said of Hussein. “This guy’s a butcher . . . a mad dog and a killer. . . . He gasses women and children.”

Equally harsh denunciations of the Iraqi leader charged the debate in the House, where members voted 234 to 175 to approve a similar but narrower amendment that would cut off only the $500 million in credits that Iraq receives to buy American farm products--principally rice, corn, eggs, sugar, chicken and tobacco.

However, heeding pleas from Farm Belt congress members who argued that sanctions would also hurt American farmers, the House voted 208 to 191 to weaken its amendment by including a waiver allowing the Bush Administration to continue the credits if it determines that U.S. farmers would suffer more from the sanctions than the Iraqis. The Senate voted 57 to 38 to kill a similar attempt to weaken the D’Amato amendment.

Reacting to the votes, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Administration opposes any action by Congress to impose sanctions because “we just don’t think it would help . . . in achieving the goals we want to achieve in our relationship with Iraq.”

Nevertheless, Boucher said the Administration is reviewing its Iraq policy and may scale back relations with Hussein’s regime. The Commerce Department will soon issue regulations to prevent the export of equipment and technology that could be used in nuclear or chemical weapons programs, and the Agriculture Department is already reviewing credit sales of farm products to Iraq, he said.

Administration officials added that the State Department objects to the congressional action as a blunderbuss approach liable to enrage Hussein without causing him to change his behavior.

Referring to the sanctions voted by the Senate and House, one official said, “It is not going to hurt the Iraqis very much. It is just designed to show that we are doing something. It will hurt American grain farmers.”

California Rep. Wally Herger (R-Yuba City) agreed that the first victims will be American farmers, especially California rice growers. Iraq is a major importer of California rice. He argued successfully for the waiver in the House bill.

“There is no one here who does not abhor the human rights situation in Iraq, but sanctions like these don’t work,” Herger said.

But, comparing Hussein to Adolf Hitler, D’Amato and others argued successfully that dropping the sanctions provision would be tantamount to a “policy of appeasement” in the face of increasingly alarming Iraqi behavior.

That behavior ranges from Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its Kurdish minorities to its most recent military threats against Kuwait.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.