UNITED NATIONS - Hans von Sponeck believed he could help heal Iraq's wounds.
                    Instead, he became another casualty of one of the world's longest-running tragedies.

                    ``I thought it was possible to meet the minimum needs of Iraqis even with sanctions in
                    place,'' says von Sponeck, who was director of the United Nations humanitarian relief
                    program in Iraq until he resigned in protest three months ago. ``I was wrong.''

                    Von Sponeck, who spent 32 years as a top U.N. civil servant in Africa, Europe and
                    Asia until his career crashed to a painful end in Baghdad, was the fifth director in the
                    five-year history of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program (OIP). ``I was actually the
                    person who stayed the longest, almost 17 months,'' he says from his home in Geneva,
                    where he has taken early retirement. ``My predecessor lasted just 13 months before he
                    quit.''

                    The serial resignations provide extra ammunition for critics who say the U.N. embargo
                    against Iraq hurts the wrong people.

                    ``Some 167 Iraqi children are dying every day,'' von Sponeck says. ``Maybe the
                    sanctions were once defensible as a temporary measure, but after nine years they are
                    violating international law.''

                    Moreover, the grisly tales of poverty and malnutrition out of Iraq raise questions
                    about whether embargoes are still a useful international tool. That was the British
                    parliament's conclusion this year in a report noting the drastic consequences of the
                    Iraq embargo.

                    Ironically, the program headed by von Sponeck was an attempt to shield ordinary
                    Iraqis from just such a situation. The so-called Oil For Food arrangement was created
                    by the U.N. Security Council in 1995 - four years after Saddam Hussein's defeat in the
                    Gulf War - as a temporary means of allowing Iraq to buy food, medicine and other
                    basic supplies with revenue from its rich oil reserves.

                    According to von Sponeck, it was doomed from the start because the big powers -
                    particularly the United States and Britain - systematically manipulated the program to
                    serve political aims. ``Instead of being about saving children's lives, it's about saving
                    face,'' he says.

                    Western diplomats and some of von Sponeck's former U.N. colleagues angrily deny
                    the charge. They insist the real culprit is Saddam, who exploits his people's to win
                    international support for ending the embargo.

                    Nevertheless, the complaints of normally publicity-shy U.N. bureaucrats like von
                    Sponeck are becoming hard to ignore.

                    How did things get to this point?

                    Under the Office of the Iraq Program, Iraq was given a ceiling in U.S. dollars on the
                    amount of oil it could sell in each 180-day period, starting with $2 billion and reaching
                    more than $5 billion until the ceilings were finally lifted this year.

                    The money is deposited in eight bank accounts in Europe and the United States,
                    where it is administered by U.N. officials. They use it to pay for food and medicine
                    shipped to Iraq on the basis of contracts signed by the Baghdad regime.

                    Thanks to the U.N. program, more than 10 million metric tonnes of foodstuffs and the
                    equivalent of nearly $10.5 billion in medicine and health supplies have poured into the
                    country since 1997.

                    While that sounds like a lot of aid, Iraqi officials say it is of limited use in a country
                    whose infrastructure has been stretched to the breaking point. Private relief
                    organizations and even some U.N. officials back that argument.

                    ``No matter how much food you give a person, the minute she takes contaminated
                    water - because of unsanitary conditions and the breakdown of Iraq's clean water
                    supply - that investment is down the drain,'' admits one senior OIP official who asked
                    to remain anonymous.

                    Although the U.N. has begun to approve contracts for infrastructure supplies and
                    spare parts, chronic breakdowns in Iraq's electricity grid, hospital network and
                    distribution system condemn what was once a sophisticated economy to have-not
                    status.

                    That, of course, was supposed to be the point of the embargo in the first place.

                    It was a means to force Saddam to comply with the disarmament pledges he made at
                    the end of the war. If Saddam continued to resist, the thinking went, his suffering
                    people would rise up and get rid of him.

                    Whether that was ever a realistic scenario, the Oil For Food program was clearly not
                    the solution to Iraq's dilemma. Was it part of the problem?

                    ``What we do is operate a machine which enables the government of Iraq to sell its oil
                    and buy what its people most need,'' explains John Mills, the Oil For Food program's
                    chief spokesperson in New York.

                    ``We're not direct players, except in the northern areas of the country, which are
                    under direct U.N. control.''

                    In fact, the U.N. is far from a passive participant. It must approve each list of items
                    requested by Baghdad, partly to ensure Iraqis get minimum standards of nutrition and
                    partly to make sure no suspect material that could be used for military purposes slips
                    through the embargo.

                    More than $2.5 billion worth of alleged ``dual-purpose'' goods have been held up,
                    ranging from chlorine and pesticides to heavy trucks and ambulances.

                    The number is small compared with the total amount of aid. But according to von
                    Sponeck and other critics, it demonstrates how U.N. efforts to micromanage the relief
                    effort inadvertently worsen Iraq's situation.

                    ``In all my years at the U.N., I had never been exposed to the kind of political
                    manoeuvring and pressure that I saw at work in this program,'' says von Sponeck.

                    He says the core of the problem lies in U.S. domination of the ``sanctions committee''
                    appointed by the Security Council to oversee the program.

                    Washington's fears of granting any concessions to Saddam that might erode the
                    sanctions caused periodic delays in shipments and occasionally prevented key
                    supplies from arriving at all, he adds.

                    Von Sponeck won't give specific details, but says he concluded that to stay any
                    longer as OIP director ``would have made me a guilty party.''

                    His predecessor was equally disturbed by the contradiction of operating a
                    humanitarian program in the shadow of an embargo. ``Surely, it's time that (we) find an
                    alternative way to live with Iraq without punishing an innocent populace,'' Dennis
                    Halliday said during a joint appearance with von Sponeck before a U.S. congressional
                    subcommittee this spring.

                    Both men, as well as other U.N. officials who left the program, have called for
                    separating the military and economic embargoes on Iraq.

                    ``Smart'' sanctions, they say, would target elite members and institutions of the Iraqi
                    regime that have so far been able to avoid the worst consequences, thanks to
                    widespread smuggling and profiteering.

                    Von Sponeck says that by altering the embargo, ``President (Bill) Clinton in his final
                    year of office could perform a real act of statesmanship, but the Americans and British
                    are as cornered as the Iraqis.''

                    The two ex-directors have been accused of being apologists for Saddam, a charge
                    von Sponeck bitterly rebuts.

                    ``I've got little time for dictators, considering the history of my own country,'' says
                    von Sponeck, a German national.

                    ``But we're treating Iraq as if it were made up of 23 million Saddam Husseins, which is
                    rubbish.''

                    Meanwhile, von Sponeck can only sympathize with his successor, another veteran
                    U.N. bureaucrat named Benon Sevan. ``I wish him nothing but good luck,'' von
                    Sponeck says sadly.

                    ``But if he has a conscience, he will go through the same process I did.''