Baker Says Iraq Sanctions May Never Work

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney on Sunday gave the bleakest assessment to date of the effect of economic sanctions against Iraq, with Baker suggesting that they may never work, no matter how long the United States waits.

In a series of television appearances, Baker, Cheney and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft--the senior members of the Bush Administration’s foreign-policy team--all went to great lengths to counter recent arguments on Capitol Hill that the United States should avoid military action and give the sanctions against Iraq more time.

Their seemingly coordinated remarks suggested that the Bush Administration now believes that it must resolve the Persian Gulf crisis over the next few months, rather than try to maintain the international embargo over a longer period. Baker and Cheney are likely to press this theme again when they testify at congressional hearings later this week.

“No one can tell you that economic sanctions, standing alone, will ever get him (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) out of Kuwait,” Baker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

” . . . We would have hoped they (the sanctions) would have worked by now,” Baker continued. “And many major nations around the world told us they felt, initially, that there would be a good chance that they would work inside two or three months. It’s quite clear that’s not the case.”

Last week, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--retired Air Force Gen. David C. Jones and retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr.--urged the Bush Administration to give more time for sanctions to work.

A number of senators and Congress members have echoed this same argument in recent days, posing a serious political obstacle to the Administration’s effort to persuade Hussein that the United States is prepared and willing to take military action to get Iraq out of Kuwait.

When asked Sunday about Crowe’s and Jones’ testimony, Baker indirectly challenged their credentials to speak out on the effectiveness of sanctions.

“We’re talking about sanctions,” the secretary of state said. “We’re not talking about military operations. We’re talking about whether or not, as a political matter, these sanctions can work.”

Baker and Cheney acknowledged that the United States and other countries misjudged how effective the international sanctions against Iraq would be, in part because Hussein’s government is doing a better job than expected of stepping up food production.

“It turns out that Iraq is, indeed, a major importer of food in the past, but that’s not because they can’t produce their own. That’s because of incompetent economic policies,” the defense secretary said. “There are three occasions in the last 25 years when they’ve doubled their production of cereals, for example, within 12 months. That’s clearly what they’re doing again now, and they should be able to sustain themselves from an agricultural standpoint.”

Cheney said the international embargo has had some impact on Hussein’s ability to obtain spare parts for his military. However, he said, the tempo of operations for the Iraqi military isn’t high now. “The expectation that sanctions will definitely produce a result, it seems to me, is a risky one,” Cheney concluded in an interview on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

Scowcroft, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said Hussein “has enormous stockpiles built up. He will protect his military machine from the effect of the sanctions. That’ll be the last thing to weaken.”

The senior Administration officials also argued that, even if the economic sanctions are effective, there would be serious drawbacks to a U.S. policy of delaying a final resolution of the gulf crisis.

“There’s a penalty to be paid by delay,” Cheney said. “This (international) coalition that we put together, that everything now rests upon, wasn’t there four months ago. . . . Being able to maintain and hold that together over that length of time, I think, is a risky factor.”

Scowcroft raised the specter that during a delay of a year or so, Iraq might develop more deadly weapons.

“One of the arguments against ‘Why not let sanctions run forever?’ is the possibility that he (Hussein) could, in one way or another, develop some kind of a device which would dramatically increase casualties to coalition forces if there were conflict,” the national security adviser said.

During his interview, Baker repeated past Administration assurances that if Saddam Hussein withdraws fully from Kuwait, the United States would not take military action against him. “If he complied with the (United Nations) resolutions, his reward for that would not be a military attack by the United States,” the secretary of state said.

On Friday, a day after the United Nations authorized the use of force against Iraq if it does not withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15, President Bush offered to send Baker on a mission to Baghdad in what Bush called an effort to “go the extra mile for peace.”

Iraq issued a public statement accepting the offer, but by Sunday night the White House said it had still not received any direct confirmation or details from Iraqi officials concerning the proposed trip.

Baker on Sunday rejected Iraqi suggestions that the upcoming talks cover Palestinian questions as well as the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

“What we’re going to say when he (the Iraqi president) asks about the Palestinians is, ‘We don’t think you invaded Kuwait to help the Palestinians. And if you did, all you’ve done is hurt the Palestinians.’ And secondly, these things should not be linked. They are two entirely different issues.”

Also Sunday, Hussein said in a French television interview that the chances of war or peace in the gulf crisis are “50-50.” He said the outcome will depend on whether the dialogue offered by Bush is genuine or simply “a formal exhibition.”

Hussein’s “50-50” comment was in response to the question: “Are we closer to war or to peace?”