Re: UN Reform and the oil for food program
Who was trying to plug the holes, relieve the sufferig of Iraqis and still keep the clamps on a murderous tyrant? Once again the complete ignorance of the self interest of Russia through the whole affair is like an elephant in the room. More than a little rewriting of history here diplomat wannabe…
Smart exit
Jul 5th 2001 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition
The end of the smart sanctions
FOR once, Saddam Hussein can justly declare victory. His mortal foes, America and Britain, had been plotting to tighten the 11-year siege of his regime by making United Nations sanctions “smarter”. But the threat of a Russian veto at the Security Council scuppered months of inter-continental haggling. This week, the old “dumb” sanctions were extended unchanged. The smart ones may now be sunk for good.
AP
Hands up for dumb sanctions
Iraq would, of course, prefer to see the sanctions lifted altogether. Mr Hussein’s hapless people remain stuck with the UN’s four-year-old oil-for-food programme (which allows Iraq to buy “humanitarian” goods with its oil money) as their only source of sustenance—plus a good bit extra, growing all the time, from government-controlled smuggling. This is not just depressing in economic terms, but morale-destroying to any Iraqi with dreams for the future. Even as his enemies were being forced into retreat, Mr Hussein’s victory was tarnished by reports of two of his senior envoys to the UN asking for asylum.
The turn of events also leaves Iraq with an ever heavier debt to Russia (it already owes it something like $8 billion, mainly for ancient arms deals). Iraq has long been wooing the Russians with promises of lucrative contracts and concessions in its oilfields. Now, as voting on smart sanctions neared, Iraq’s pledge soared close to $21 billion-worth of business, or so the Baghdad rumour-mill suggested. Whether or not that is anywhere near the truth, Russia will not have sold its veto cheap.
More happily for Iraq’s rulers, the prolonging of the current system preserves the breaches they have systematically poked through the sanctions wall. The growing gaps sustain a thriving underground trade which, together with kickbacks and surcharges on some legal contracts, is by now thought to be worth about $3 billion a year. This is still far less than the $18 billion that Iraq earned last year from its legal oil sales. But the underground income goes straight to the Iraqi regime to spend as it will (not necessarily on the needs of ordinary Iraqis), unlike the legal money that goes into a UN-controlled escrow account and has nearly a third lopped off for war-restitution and the UN’s not inconsiderable expenses.
The smuggling income, which smart sanctions were designed to cut off, gives Mr Hussein plenty of leeway to influence people. In particular, three of Iraq’s neighbours—Turkey, Syria and Jordan—have grown dependent on its cheap oil and hungry market. Small wonder that all three voiced strong doubts over the American-British plans. Through a recently reopened pipeline, Syria is believed to be importing up to $1 billion-worth of Iraqi oil a year at a huge discount. And in Jordan, a country that relies on Iraq for all its energy needs and a third of its exports, a recent opinion poll found 83% of respondents against taking part in smart sanctions.
Britain and America had hoped to counter such hostility by protesting that smart sanctions would both relieve the suffering of the Iraqi people and encompass mechanisms to compensate their neighbours. A main purpose of the new scheme—apart from the wish to plug the holes in dumb sanctions—was to shift the blame for Iraqi suffering away from the UN and to the Iraqi regime itself. In the words of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s envoy at the UN, “There will be no reason why Iraq cannot import a full range of civilian goods, and Iraq will have no pretext to blame the UN for the suffering of the Iraqi people. The new proposals will nail that false charge once and for all.”
This public-relations exercise collapsed. Instead, a long argument developed on which civilian or dual-use goods would be subject to review by a UN monitoring committee. The bickering over details became so prolonged and intense that the principle of the new sanctions, once apparently accepted by all the veto-wielding members of the Security Council, was again questioned by Russia.
At an open council debate on the issue, Britain and America appeared isolated. Even France, which, after a falling-out of sorts with Iraq, has been backing smart sanctions, wondered how Britain could want to keep a ban on foreign investment while also claiming it wanted oil-for-food to turn into oil-for-development. The convoluted wording of the new proposal was seen to be veiling stringent and intrusive controls on trade and finance, keeping Iraq a soup kitchen, albeit a more efficient one. Delegates from neutral countries, such as India and Malaysia, bluntly called for sanctions to be lifted rather than rejigged.
This was also the gist of a short counter-resolution tabled by Russia which returned to the first principles of the 1991 UN ceasefire resolution by saying that civilian sanctions should be dropped once the UN arms inspectors had reported that “a reinforced system of ongoing monitoring and verification in Iraq is fully deployed”. But that hope remains remote so long as Iraq refuses all weapons inspections.
Russia was no doubt acting largely out of self-interest. Even so, its determination not only to stop smart sanctions, but to steal the terms of debate, captured the general mood. Most of the world, by now, is more weary of the siege of Iraq than wary of what they assume, rightly or wrongly, to be a much diminished enemy.
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=684505
