News ANALYSIS : Iraq Economic Embargo Could Stir Full Blockade

The mounting international effort to put an economic squeeze on Saddam Hussein lowers his Iraqi regime to a status previously held only by Southern Rhodesia and raises the possibility that a trade embargo might be enforced with a full-fledged blockade.

The collective action for an embargo, amounting to economic warfare, is a rare display of unanimity. Further, experts said that it opens the door to even bolder steps: possible shutdowns of Iraqi oil pipelines or even a move by U.S. naval vessels to block seaborne shipments to or from Iraq.

Administration officials said that the United States could not consider such action until other nations have made known their willingness to join in sanctions against Iraq. But with the U.N. Security Council appearing poised to make a worldwide embargo mandatory, they said that further steps had become more likely.

A well-enforced embargo would impose a potentially devastating burden on Iraq, which is highly dependent on its oil revenues and whose spare food supplies are insufficient to adequately feed its population, according to experts on the region.

“If the pipeline is cut and they can’t get commodities into the country, they’re going to starve,” said Judith Kipper, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

But analysts also warned that any embargo, even if backed up with naval might, would be slow to take effect, difficult to administer--and could cost the outside world dearly in the form of lower trade revenues and higher oil prices.

“This is very much a two-edged sword,” said Alan J. Stoga, managing director of Kissinger Associates in New York.

The Administration bid to tighten the economic noose apparently was guaranteed Security Council support as China indicated in a closed-door session in New York that it would not oppose a resolution calling for a broad embargo on Iraq, diplomatic sources said.

The resolution, binding on all 159 member states, would effectively cut all trade with Iraq and Kuwait except for humanitarian relief. With the required nine-member majority lined up in support, approval is expected as early as today.

The measure would mark the first imposition of mandatory economic sanctions by the United Nations since similar action against the rebel British colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1967. While that move proved of little immediate value, experts said Sunday that Iraq is probably more vulnerable to a squeeze.

Most important, 90% of Iraq’s oil exports depend on foreign ports and pipelines. While neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia, their fingers on the valve, has yet been willing to take action, the analysts said that a declaration of international embargo might embolden Turkey, at least, to move to stop the flow.

Absent such actions, an oil embargo would remain subject to violation by nations unwilling to submit to higher oil prices. But because Iraqi trade is channeled through just three ports, some analysts said Sunday that the new international willingness to do without Iraqi oil might provide leeway for the United States to enforce the embargo with its naval cordon.

“The only really effective chance that you have of cutting off exports of oil from Iraq is to interdict those three points,” said House Armed Services Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) in a television interview Sunday. “That, I think, would have a much better chance of succeeding than an embargo.”

But critics warn that such an effort, targeting the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Mediterranean ports on which Iraq relies, would be difficult to enforce and ultimately futile because of its impact on worldwide oil prices.

“It’s a very simple matter to establish a blockade,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Gene La Rocque, director of the Center for Defense Information. “But to make an effective blockade would be difficult if not impossible.”

Added James R. Schlesinger, a former secretary of defense and energy, in an interview on CBS: “If we had a blockade, then we would see the price of oil move up, our European allies would be opposed to us, and the public would be in an uproar. I think that the Administration will simply have to give up on this particular ambition.”

A senior Administration official confirmed Sunday night that the idea of a naval blockade is “being discussed” but cautioned that it is “only in the context of nothing being ruled out.”

However enforced, the new campaign of economic warfare is likely to have its most immediate effect on ordinary Iraqi citizens, who have become used to readily available foreign goods.

What remains a matter of dispute, the analysts said, is whether a shutdown of food and other supplies would kindle sufficient domestic discontent, or whether Hussein could force the outside world to ease the embargo by forcing Kuwaiti civilians to bear its brunt.

“It’s sort of a race between what the Iraqis will do to the civilians and the absolute necessity for the United States to stop this takeover,” said Kipper, the Brookings scholar.

But with the passing of the Cold War forging unprecedented international unity, most analysts expressed cautious optimism about the effect of economic war against Iraq.

“If they pass the U.N. resolution,” said Kimberley Ann Elliott, a research associate at the Institute for International Economics and an expert on economic sanctions, “it stands a pretty good chance of being effective.”

Times staff writers Robin Wright, in Washington, and Don Shannon, at the United Nations, contributed to this story.