Tougher sanctions against military shipments to Iraq will be matched by an easing of measures that impact directly on Iraqi civilians, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday, February 27. Speaking to reporters on his way into a meeting with European Commission President Romano Prodi, Powell said the Bush administration was determined to keep world pressure on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"If we move forward with the proposals that I have been shopping around the (Middle East) region, we will tighten sanctions on weapons of mass destruction, on material, on armaments, on all those sorts of equipment that put people in the region at risk," Powell said. "What we would do then is to remove some of the restrictions on materials that can go to civilians, so that he (Saddam) will no longer have the excuse of saying we are hurting the Iraqi people, when the intent has been to contain his appetite for weapons of mass destruction."
Powell added that the United States would do "all we can" to strengthen controls on funds that go to the Iraqi regime under the UN's "oil for food" program.
Iraq began top-level private talks Monday with the United Nations on breaking the stalemate over sanctions, but took an uncompromising public stance, ruling out a resumption of arms inspections.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Said Al-Sahhaf warned there would be no return for any inspectors in Iraq, "even if sanctions are totally lifted." The talks were the first high-level substantive contact between the two sides since December 1998, when UN arms inspectors left Iraq for the last time.
Meanwhile, a senior US official said the United States would send an envoy to NATO ally Turkey this week to urge Ankara to match commitments made by Syria on limiting trade with Iraq under revised UN sanctions.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward Walker will be in Turkey on Thursday, the official told reporters traveling with Powell.
Powell met earlier Tuesday with Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in Brussels. He also held three-way talks with British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and French Foreign Secretary Hubert Vedrine. Britain fully supports US policy towards Iraq, but France has questioned the effectiveness of the sanctions.
Powell was in Brussels for a brief NATO foreign ministers' meeting, following his first Middle East mission during which he urged Iraq's neighbors to continue support for UN sanctions imposed 10 years ago in the aftermath of the Gulf war.
"We have had some success in the last two days in discussions with the frontline states in the region to tighten up on (Saddam's) ability to smuggle out things," Powell said. But "at the end of the day," he said, it is up to Saddam whether or not to bow to sanctions and let UN inspectors back into his country to probe Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
"If they don't come back in, then the conditions set by the United Nations will not be met, and he will consider himself still trapped in the box that he has constructed for himself," Powell said. "There are lots of ways to describe this idea. Some have said they are going to be 'smart' sanctions. Some have said they are going to be reenergized sanctions," he said. "But what we are really going to see are strengthened sanctions against the threats that the sanctions were intended to deal with in the first place," he said. — (AFP, Brussels)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
