For Iraq, the Promise of Aid and Threat of Attack : United Nations: World body wants to ease suffering but keeps the pressure on for nuclear disclosure.

This country is about to receive a promise of relief from its economic troubles while at the same time it is facing a renewed threat of military attack.

Both promise and threat come from the United Nations.

A U.N. commission that has just completed a two-week visit to Iraq will recommend today from Geneva that economic sanctions be eased to relieve what one commission member said is “a very serious nutritional crisis and signs of impending famine.”

But on Thursday, the U.N. Security Council gave Iraq a two-week ultimatum: Saddam Hussein’s government must open all of its nuclear facilities for complete U.N. inspection or Iraq will face the possibility of military attacks by the United States and its Persian Gulf allies on suspected nuclear installations.

As of Saturday night, Iraq had not responded to the Security Council’s ultimatum. Nor had it responded to a new demand from the U.N. inspection team in Baghdad for a complete list of facilities in which nuclear research and development has been carried on. The U.N. team also asked Iraq to declare where its nuclear equipment was manufactured and installed.

The inspection team urged Iraqi authorities to do their best to deliver that complete list to it today. A source familiar with the team’s work described the new requests in these terms: “We open up the Pandora’s box and see what more we find. Then we bring pressure on them (the Iraqis). It is like extracting teeth.”

Meanwhile, in contrast to its reticence on nuclear matters, Iraq remains more than willing to tell the world that economic sanctions are hurting its population--particularly children who it is said are suffering disease because of a lack of medicines, powdered milk and infant formula.

However, talk is no longer heard of epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other diseases. Electric power has been largely restored in Baghdad, the capital city of 4 million people. And earlier predictions of hundreds of thousands of infant deaths are being discounted.

Daniel Tarantola of the World Health Organization on Friday in Baghdad termed “unreliable” an earlier Harvard University report that predicted 170,000 infant deaths in Iraq. But Tarantola added: “We found the health situation is bad. The problems are getting worse, and I think they should prepare for the worst.”

In Baghdad’s hospitals, the talk is of economics--of inflation that has driven the price of powdered milk and infant formula beyond the reach of Iraq’s poor and indeed of most of its wage earners.

“I have double the number of cases of children suffering severe diarrhea and malnutrition in my hospital now as I had last year. But the real danger is in the homes, where the children get sick and the families cannot afford the food,” said Kassim Ismail, director of the Saddam Central Teaching Hospital for Children, a 400-bed center considered the best children’s hospital in Iraq.

There are shortages of medicines, relieved partly by humanitarian organizations that are bringing in supplies. For example, a group of Iraqi-Americans from the Detroit area has just completed a two-week visit to the country of their birth, bringing supplies of medicine and food.

The situation of ordinary Iraqis is increasingly bleak. Government employees, who make up the bulk of the work force, make a minimum of 150 Iraqi dinars a month. That is equal to $480 at the official exchange rate but barely $25 a month at the unofficial black market rate. And it is the black market rate that applies to most foodstuff and goods now in Iraq’s economy.

The price of a can of powdered milk has increased from 8 cents to $2, presenting a formidable burden to families making $25 a month.

There are goods in Baghdad stores, thanks in part to Iraqi businessmen who have mounted a worldwide purchase operation from Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan, 600 miles away. They purchase food and merchandise that is shipped ostensibly for “final destination Amman.” But then the goods move by truck up the highway to Baghdad.

That highway, like much of central Iraq--Baghdad and nearby towns--is in surprisingly good repair considering the bombing this country went through in the war only four months ago.

Baghdad itself is remarkably undamaged. Government buildings show considerable bomb damage, but most other buildings appear not to have been scratched. Traffic is thick in the wide boulevards, and the three bridges over the Tigris River that were knocked out are under repair.

“You will see that we have the will to rebuild our country,” a government official tells visiting journalists, who are told about economic sufferings in an attempt to appeal to the world to lift sanctions.