U.S. to Seek End to Iraqi Oil Limits

The Clinton administration intends to propose that the United Nations lift all limits on Iraq’s ability to export oil to pay for the basic requirements of daily life, in what would be the most significant change in sanctions on Baghdad since they were imposed eight years ago, according to U.S. officials.

The administration’s plan was revealed Wednesday as France offered the U.N. Security Council its own proposal to remove the oil embargo and create a new monitoring system in Iraq that would focus on stopping President Saddam Hussein from acquiring new weapons of mass destruction rather than a search for existing arms.

The U.S. shift is designed to ease the plight of the Iraqi people while preventing Hussein’s regime from regaining control of the national economy. Under the oil-for-food program, the U.N. basically controls Iraq’s export economy in an attempt to prevent use of oil riches to buy anything that would allow Baghdad to rebuild its weapons of mass destruction program. The proposal would remove any ceiling in the amount Iraq could export--but would not mean an end to the oil embargo.

The U.S. proposal reflects the administration’s conclusion that there are virtually no prospects of Iraq’s complying any time soon with U.N. resolutions on weapons of mass destruction and other provisions.

“Compliance is not likely to happen in the near future, and it’s always been the U.S. position that people should be insulated as much as possible from the effects of sanctions so that the burden falls on the leadership and denies Hussein what he wants, which is control of his revenues,” a senior administration official said Wednesday.

In recent years, three of the five U.N. Security Council members--France, Russia and China--have repeatedly used the issue of public hardship to argue for an easing of the sanctions and for changes in the disarmament program, whose goal is to find and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

In its proposal Wednesday, France offered the first concrete plan designed to change the inspection system.

“France considers it high time for the Security Council to recognize that no additional progress on disarmament work can be reached by an illusory resumption of unchanged previous methods,” the proposal said. “Such an attempt would only create a new cycle of tensions, provocations and bombings.”

France argued that although U.S. and British bombings in mid-December may have weakened Iraq’s military potential, the attacks have made further investigations by inspectors with the U.N. Special Commission “almost impossible.”

After the bombings, Iraq vowed that it will not allow the weapons inspectors back into the country. Since the airstrikes, Baghdad has also aggressively challenged U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the “no-fly” zones set up by Western powers after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect Kurds in Iraq’s north and Shiite Muslims in the south.

In the latest incident, U.S. planes Wednesday attacked several surface-to-air missile sites after being targeted by Iraqi radar in the northern no-fly zone. Pentagon officials said at least one missile was fired at the U.S. aircraft, which returned to base safely.

The U.S. reaction to the French plan was polite but cool. The State Department said the plan contained some positive elements, but officials stressed that the search for existing weapons should not be abandoned.

“The Security Council resolutions . . . make clear that Iraq must disarm and that it must do so by fully disclosing its weapons of mass destruction programs,” said State Department spokesman James P. Rubin.

“The burden is on Iraq to disclose its weapons of mass destruction if Iraq wants to get out from under the sanctions regime,” Rubin said. “The United States has always been skeptical, and perhaps others are not as skeptical as we are.

“We have a number of questions and concerns that we are going to address to France about the proposal,” he added.

Vice President Al Gore introduced the U.S. idea of expanding the oil-for-food program during a speech Wednesday night at the Israel Policy Forum in New York.

Gore said the United States wants to do whatever is humanly possible to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian programs and provide more money for food and medicine--and in turn to remove as an issue the hardship faced by Iraq’s people.

“We wanted to emphasize that the U.S. entertains no ill will toward the people of Iraq and that the United States looks forward to good relations with them under a different regime,” said a senior member of Gore’s staff.

“We’ve always been concerned about the humanitarian condition of the Iraqi people, and we are now looking for ways to improve programs in Iraq, including more money for food and medicine,” the aide said.

Under terms of the U.N. program, revenues from oil sales can be spent on food, health care, educational material and other humanitarian items needed for daily survival. But as sanctions have dragged on for eight years, the United Nations has shown greater flexibility, particularly over the past year, about what it approves.

Recent supplies, for example, have included items such as silicone breast implants and the anti-impotence drug Viagra, according to U.N. officials. The United Nations has even approved the use of $300 million from the oil-for-food sales so that Iraq can improve the infrastructure of its oil industry, which needs updating and repairs in order to produce as much oil as Baghdad is allowed to sell.

The U.S. move reflects the gradual change in strategy over the past year as Washington seeks to remove Hussein’s trump card, which has been the suffering of the Iraqi people. Baghdad has often blamed the United States and the United Nations for shortages that have caused the deaths of thousands of children a month--despite the fact that Iraq delayed implementation of the program for more than four years because it did not want to lose control over its vital oil income.

Last year, a U.N. resolution raised the annual ceiling of $4 billion in the oil-for-food program to about $10.5 billion. That amount is about equivalent to what Iraq exported before the 1990-91 Gulf crisis--and is a ceiling that Iraq, with its war-ravaged infrastructure, cannot reach today.

The new U.S. proposal, in addition to lifting any artificial ceiling on exports, would also seek to streamline the process of approval, which has sometimes taken weeks and even months.

“We don’t want Baghdad to have any excuse to blame the international community,” the senior administration official said.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials were quick to react to the French plan unveiled Wednesday. Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said the proposal “does not match our point of view.”

“Any resolution which is not discussed or negotiated with Iraq . . . will be rejected and we will not implement it,” he said.

At the United Nations, Fred Eckhard, spokesman for Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the French plan is an initial step toward resuming discussions in the Security Council about the Iraq disarmament issue.

The most controversial portion of the French plan, some diplomats said, is a new control commission aimed at preventing Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The group would not search for stockpiles of existing arms, as the current inspection regime does.

“The control would not be retrospective but would be preventive,” the plan is said to specify.

The new commission would, however, have the right to conduct surprise inspections.

Wright reported from Washington and Goldman from the United Nations.