U.N. Lifts Teddy Bear Blockade of Iraq

The teddy bear hostage crisis has ended.

Fifty-nine days after U.S. authorities at Los Angeles International Airport detained a shipment of 2,000 stuffed animals collected for ailing Iraqi children, the chairman of the United Nations Sanctions Committee on Friday signed an order lifting the blockade.

A thrilled Dianne Judice, the Santa Barbara nurse whose “Teddy Bears for Iraq” campaign attracted wide media attention after the shipment was halted Jan. 29, said she hoped to personally deliver the cuddly cargo to Iraqi hospitals within three weeks.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Judice said after she was notified that Ambassador Peter Hohenhellner of Austria, chairman of the Sanctions Committee, signed the order. “The people opened up their hearts and saw the true meaning of what the teddy bears are all about.”

For Judice, the committee’s blessings climaxed seven weeks of efforts to persuade government officials that the humanitarian shipment, which included medicine and used clothing, did not represent an effort to subvert the U.N. embargo against Iraq. Sanctions adopted after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, allowed only food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies on a case-by-case basis.

Judice initially encountered a hard-line reaction from U.S. officials. One Treasury Department official told her that making an exception for teddy bears could lead to the transport of weapons. Some officials predicted that even if the United States endorsed her shipment, other nations would veto it.

Judice, a former pediatric nurse who lost a 2-year-old son to leukemia, responded by marshaling medical experts to bolster her claim that stuffed animals have a therapeutic value for sick and injured children. When another Treasury Department official suggested that Iraqi children could not relate to teddy bears, Hanaa Wardi, an Iraqi-American who helped with the crusade, recalled the stuffed animals she made while growing up in Baghdad.

Their efforts paid off. The story received wide press coverage in the United States, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Hundreds of people sympathetic to Judice’s cause sent more teddy bears.

Judice gradually detected a softening in U.S. government policy, as officials became uncomfortable with an anti-teddy bear posture. Officials at “a high level” had lent support, one U.S. official said.

Before Judice is able to leave for Iraq, paperwork must be processed by the State and Treasury departments.

Officials on Friday said they foresee no more delays for the teddy bear brigade.