FOREIGN MINISTER Lloyd Axworthy is stung when told the Liberal government ought to be ashamed of its support for the Anglo-American bombing of Iraq and the eight-year-old economic sanctions that are strangling 20 million innocent Iraqi civilians.

Axworthy has a long track record of working with human rights groups and NGOs for a more moral and independent foreign policy. In office, he has been a strong advocate of human security at the centre of international priorities.

Hence his leadership on war crimes tribunals, the treaty on land mines, the campaigns against trade in small arms and for building institutions of democracy and the rule of law.

Yet on Iraq, he has followed the Brian Mulroney tradition of lining up behind American actions being condemned by most members of the United Nations, including the Security Council and citizens' groups across Canada.

Church leaders have written to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Others have lobbied Liberal ministers and MPs to no avail.

People feel particularly let down by Axworthy.

``While I'm high on praise for him for several of his initiatives, he has been behaving disgracefully on Iraq,'' says Dr. Joanna Santa Barbara of Hamilton, former president of Physicians for Global Survival, echoing a broad sentiment.

Axworthy has a response.

He says he has been quietly lobbying U S. Secretary of State Madelaine Albright. And working behind the scenes at the Security Council to reconcile two competing resolutions - an Anglo-Dutch proposal (a front for America) to resurrect arms inspections in return for a progressive easing of sanctions, and a French-Russian proposal to end the sanctions more quickly.

Canada helped set up three panels, on disarmament, on humanitarian relief, and on outstanding issues from the 1991 Gulf War, including unaccounted for PoWs. Panel reports have become the platform to bridge the gap between the two resolutions.

``We held together a group of nations at the Security Council so they won't go to either camp,'' said Axworthy in an interview.

``We have been doing this balancing act - amending, altering, massaging both sides to get something that won't get vetoed.

``Gradually, we began getting concessions and have been moving both sides to our basic points: There should be a clear road map for lifting sanctions and a clear opening for foreign investments in Iraq'' to help rebuild the infrastructure, especially the oil sector to generate more revenues.

There is some evidence of progress, with a narrowing of differences between the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Says Axworthy: ``This is classic salami diplomacy. You have to take very thin slices each time you go.''

Vancouver psychiatrist Allan Connolly, of the Physicians for Global Survival, and other critics are not impressed.

Connolly, who's helping to launch a legal challenge to the sanctions policy as a contravention of the Geneva Convention, calls Ottawa's posture ``an outrage - advocating respect for the U.N. and international law while being a party to American banditry on Iraq.''

As the General Assembly reconvenes this week, it will soon become clear whether Axworthy's diplomatic dipsy-doodling leads anywhere. Or whether it becomes a convenient cover for American posturing to neutralize growing public anger from here to Europe and the Middle East.

Even those who supported the Gulf War now see sanctions as immoral - and ineffective.

Rather than encouraging Iraqis to revolt against Saddam Hussein, sanctions have made them more dependent on his regime and even more helpless than before 1991.

Rather than undermining him, sanctions have galvanized Iraqis against foreign intervention, ``forged stronger bonds among various ethnic and religious communities'' and increased illiteracy, xenophobia and fundamentalism, as pointed out by the World Council of Churches.

Few critics are buying America's ``Blame Saddam, Not Us'' approach.

Everyone knows Saddam is a murderer. He orders not just troublesome individuals killed but whole segments of his population. He and his cronies live in luxury while masses starve.

He even skims money off the oil-for-food program that allows sales of $5.26 billion of oil every six months for humanitarian relief.

But pointing the finger at him does not absolve us of our moral culpability in being even remotely associated with a policy that's slowly destroying an entire people.