This Leak Needs to Be Plugged : Once again, King Hussein is playing a losing hand by helping Iraq

Embargoes leak. That has been the conventional wisdom at least since the 1930s, when an ineffectual League of Nations tried to ban oil exports to Italy to punish its aggression against Ethiopia. Embargoes leak because when there is money to be made, some will always find ways to get around the barriers that embargoes try to impose, no matter how compelling the moral and political principles behind them.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, the United Nations prohibited trade with Saddam Hussein’s regime in all but essential goods, chiefly food and medicine. Washington finds evidence that as time goes on this prohibition is being increasingly violated. Jordan, Iraq’s neighbor, seems to be the source or entry point for most of the illicit trade.

Businessmen and diplomats in Amman said this week that high-level U.S. protests may have had a positive result. Jordan, they say, has now virtually sealed its border to private trade with Iraq and will increase its staff of inspectors to verify that the thousands of trucks that weekly pass through desert checkpoints carry no contraband. (The United States had unsuccessfully asked Jordan’s permission to station U.N. inspectors at the checkpoints to monitor the trucks.) But also this week Secretary of State James A. Baker III said ways are still being sought to enlist the cooperation of Jordan’s King Hussein in halting violations of the embargo. That strongly suggests continuing U.S. dissatisfaction with what Jordan is doing.

The king had enjoyed close relations with successive American presidents, until he refused to join most of the world--including other Arab governments--in condemning the invasion of Kuwait. That cost him a lot of political capital in Washington and a lot of income when the Arab oil states cut off their subsidies to him. Jordan’s economy, never robust, has been badly hurt. That may be one reason the king has tolerated the violations of the embargo. But helping to prolong the survival of a regional menace like Saddam Hussein does nothing to endear Jordan to its neighbors or, ultimately, enhance its own security. Jordan would be wise to ponder where its true long-term interests lie.