By Waiel Faleh
                  Associated Press Writer
                  Sunday, Sept. 3, 2000; 2:48 p.m. EDT

                  BAGHDAD, Iraq –– U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq are missing
                  their target, hurting not President Saddam Hussein but ordinary civilians, a
                  group of U.S. activists said Sunday at the end of a six-week experiment in
                  living among the Iraqi working class.

                  Five members of the Chicago-based group, Voices in the Wilderness, told
                  a news conference at the Iraqi Trade Ministry that their stay in a
                  low-income district of the southern city of Basra had shown them that
                  sanctions crippled the ability of Iraqis to have safe water and an adequate
                  diet.

                  "We have been eating the same food they get in the rations and drinking
                  the same water people here drink," said Liza Gizzi, 31, referring to the
                  food rations distributed to compensate for the shortages caused by the
                  sanctions.

                  "The food was not enough and the water made us sick," said Gizzi, from
                  St. Paul, Minn.

                  When the activists began living in al-Jumhouriya in Basra, 345 miles south
                  of Baghdad, there were six of them. But Ken Hannaford-Ricardi of
                  Worcester, Mass., found the conditions unbearable and, sick with
                  diarrhea, left Iraq after two weeks.

                  Voices and other critics have said the sanctions imposed since Iraq
                  invaded Kuwait in 1990 have prevented the flow of pumps, parts and
                  other means to repair the country's infrastructure. Electricity works only
                  intermittently. Systems for purifying drinking water and processing sewage
                  do not work.

                  "Children are dying because of the bad sewage and water systems," said
                  Tom Jackson, 40, from Dover, N.H., who was part of the group living in
                  Basra.

                  "My government and Britain are making these children lose the most
                  beautiful years of their life," he added.

                  Bad water has created an epidemic of dysentery and infectious diseases,
                  resulting in thousands of child deaths. UNICEF says the number of infant
                  and child deaths in Iraq has doubled in the decade since the sanctions
                  began.

                  The United States and Britain are the chief backers of maintaining the
                  embargo until Iraq proves it has eliminated its weapons of mass
                  destruction. Iraq says it has done so and refuses to cooperate with U.N.
                  disarmament inspectors. The inspectors have accused the government of
                  failing to make a full disclosure of its weapons programs.

                  Voices and other critics say the U.N. sanctions are the true weapons of
                  mass destruction.

                  "The American and British administrations are missing the target with their
                  sanctions the way their warplanes are missing their targets when bombing
                  Iraqi civilian properties," said Kathy Kelly of Chicago, co-founder of
                  Voices in the Wilderness.

                  U.S. and British warplanes that patrol no-fly zones over north and south
                  Iraq frequently attack when challenged by Iraqi air defense systems. Allied
                  spokesmen say the planes attack only military targets, but Iraq accuses
                  them of bombing civilian sites.

                  The activists, who are headed home, intend to start a campaign on the
                  Internet offering fans made of date-palm leaves, Kelly said.

                  Iraqis use such fans to cool themselves when the power cuts make it
                  impossible to use electric fans and air-conditioners despite stifling
                  temperatures that rise to 120 degrees.

                  Kelly said they would give fans to members of the U.N. Security Council,
                  the U.N. secretary general, U.S. presidential candidates and the State
                  Department officials on the Iraq desk.

                  "We want to remind each of these officials of the good they could
                  accomplish by revising these insidious policies," Kelly said.

                  The other members of the group were Lauren Cannon, 30, from Dover,
                  N.H., and Mark McGuire of Winona, Minn.