Let Iraqis Benefit From Oil

France and Russia are playing a cruel game at the expense of people for whom they claim to have compassion.

While Iraqi civilians in many places scrounge for food and water, storage tanks at the Turkish port of Ceyhan brim with more than 9 million barrels of Iraqi oil. If Iraqis could sell the oil, they could use the cash to supply water, food and medicine and rebuild roads and schools. Two changes are needed to make that happen: The occupied nation must have a new government and the United Nations must lift the sanctions it put in place 12 years ago in its failed effort to coax reforms from the tyrannical Saddam Hussein.

Sadly, while the U.S. and Britain scramble to get formerly disenfranchised Iraqis to create a government, France and Russia throw up obstacles to the easing of sanctions.

On Monday, for instance, a Russian news agency quoted a senior foreign ministry official in Moscow as saying sanctions must not be lifted until U.N. arms inspectors declare Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction. Before allied forces invaded Iraq, of course, France and Russia were all for lifting the sanctions and the heck with any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that Hussein might happen to be storing. Both nations had companies doing large amounts of business with an Iraqi government that awarded contracts to firms from nations it considered friendly and withdrew them instantly if it felt a wavering of commitment.

Iraq well understood that France and Russia have Security Council vetoes and it was the threat of those vetoes that prevented the Bush administration from winning support for a resolution last month to authorize the use of force against Baghdad. The invasion went ahead without the U.N., and now the U.S. needs to do some deft diplomacy to mend rifts and get Iraqi oil working for the benefit of Iraqis.

First, Washington should end its resistance to the return of the U.N. weapons inspectors who left before the war. Then the Security Council should negotiate seriously on lifting all sanctions -- including those on oil -- in phases if necessary, but as quickly as possible. That would allow the nation to rebuild without it being held hostage to political quarrels of other countries.

Russia and France are particularly concerned about the role of the United Nations in postwar Iraq. An Iraqi government freed from U.N. control would be more likely to award contracts worth billions of dollars to companies from nations that supported the overthrow of Hussein, rather than from countries that opposed the war, Russia and France among them.

An illogical fit of pique is not going to change that. What’s needed is for all nations to take a deep breath, put cynical self-interest aside and begin working to save the United Nations -- and, more important at the moment, the people of Iraq.