Published Monday, September 20, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News

End Iraq sanctions, U.N. official urges

BY DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Weighing in ahead of renewed discussions among Western powers on Iraq, the senior U.N. official here called Sunday for an immediate and unconditional lifting of many sanctions that would open the way to bigger flows of food, medicine and most other imports.

Hans von Sponek said a still-unresolved dispute over plans to revive international weapons inspections in Iraq posed increasing risks to the social fabric in a country that has already borne more than nine years of U.N. sanctions.

``Don't play the battle on the backs of the civilian population by letting them wait until the more complex issues are resolved,'' Sponek, a German who is the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said in an interview.

Sponek and his predecessor, Denis Halliday, have long tried to turn international attention toward the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, even as the United States and Britain have focused on the intransigence of the Iraqi government, and have blamed that government for the travails of its citizens.

But on Sunday, on the eve of expected talks about Iraq at the United Nations, Sponek spoke in unusually impassioned terms about what he called the dangers of ``using the human shield'' in hopes of coaxing Iraqi concessions on arms issues.

``Please remove the humanitarian discussions from the rest in order to really end a silent human tragedy,'' Sponek said.

The remarks seemed intended at least in part as a reply to a State Department report issued last week that held Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wholly accountable for the suffering of the Iraqi people.

The talks at the United Nations, among the five permanent members of the Security Council, are intended to seek agreement on a plan that would ease sanctions on Iraq in exchange for Baghdad's submission to a new system of weapons inspections to replace the one that collapsed last year.

The collapse was caused by bitter disputes between Iraq and the United Nations over access to suspected weapons sites, and it was followed last December by four days of heavy punitive airstrikes by the United States and Britain. Airstrikes have continued sporadically in the nearly 10 months since.

In that time, members of the Security Council have been unable to agree even among themselves over how any new system should function and on what terms it should be introduced.

The stalemate has left a U.N. special monitoring commission, known by the acronym UNSCOM, unable to carry out its work. Reviled by the Iraqi government for its intrusive methods, the commission is now paying the price: In Baghdad, its headquarters at a U.N. compound remains padlocked and shuttered.

France, Russia and China, among the five permanent Security Council members, have been sympathetic to Iraq's contention that its government has essentially carried out its obligations to the weapons inspectors. Those governments appear to support a plan that would allow an immediate end to the sanctions in return for Iraq's agreement to a new and less intrusive system of weapons inspection.

But the United States and Britain, which believe that Iraq may still be concealing an illicit weapons program, have argued for tougher terms. Together with the Netherlands, Britain has called for a plan that would allow only a moderate easing of the sanctions.

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