Hussein Vows No Cooperation if Sanctions Stay

As the two Americans imprisoned for four months in Iraq arrived in Jordan on Monday, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warned the United Nations that Baghdad will not comply with future disarmament efforts and other U.N. resolutions dating to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait unless international economic sanctions against it are lifted.

Hussein also appealed directly to the United States to show humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people in its position on sanctions, effectively asking a quid pro quo for his release Sunday of William Barloon and David Daliberti, the two defense workers who strayed across the Kuwaiti border in March.

The Americans’ release and the ultimatum to the United Nations coincided with Hussein’s sacking of a cousin, Defense Minister Ali Hassan Majid, who is widely blamed for atrocities against Iraq’s Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities.

Together, the actions are being interpreted here as part of a single package aimed at softening Hussein’s image as a prelude to pushing hard for an end to U.N. sanctions.

“All these steps represent a systematic attempt to curry public favor both at home and abroad. He’s trying to make his Cabinet look less like a family affair and more like a professional government body,” said Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at National Defense University here. “And by freeing the Americans, he’s trying to convince people that he’s getting more respectable. It’s a charm offensive.”

In a speech Monday commemorating the 27th anniversary of the revolution that brought his Arab Baath Socialist Party to power, Hussein said that Baghdad has complied with U.N. demands and that it is “high time” Iraq be freed from the crippling punishments imposed after its invasion of Kuwait.

“The time has come that the despots, responsible for the suffering of our people, should respond to what is fair and applicable to the resolutions,” he said. “I do not think you appreciate the bitterness of our suffering and the greatness of our pain.”

Although the U.N. Special Commission has made major progress in tracking Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, one major issue remains: Baghdad admitted only this month, almost five years after its Kuwait invasion, that it had developed a biological warfare program for offensive use. The Baghdad regime is supposed to turn over data on the project to a team of U.N. biological experts headed by American specialist Richard Sperson, who arrived in Iraq on Monday. But verification of Iraq’s secret project could take months.

Hussein is pressing hard for a clean bill of health when sanctions come up for review again in September--and holding out the prospect that Baghdad might take unspecified action should the embargo remain. “From now on, the cooperation between Iraq and the Security Council will take place only on the basis of tying this cooperation to the lifting of sanctions,” Hussein said Monday. “From now on, we’ll make no sacrifices that will not be reciprocated.”

Security Council members France, Russia and China have put the United States on notice that they intend to push for an easing of sanctions once the U.N. commission declares that Iraq has complied. But U.S. officials said Monday that Iraq is unlikely to get certification in two months.

Meanwhile, President Clinton on Monday called the two freed Americans after their 12-hour ride from Baghdad to Amman and said he was “ecstatic” that their ordeal had ended after the successful intervention of Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.).

At a news conference, Daliberti said the two men were not tortured or beaten.