ENDING THE SANCTIONS

 Editorial de  “The Washington Post” del 22.04.2003

The question of whether to lift United Nations sanctions on Iraq ought to be beyond debate. The Security Council imposed the sanctions in 1990 to force the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to evacuate Kuwait. Despite considerable anxiety about the suffering of Iraqis, the sanctions were maintained for a dozen years in a failed attempt to force the regime to give up weapons of mass destruction. Now, to the relief and joy of most Iraqis, Saddam Hussein's regime has been eliminated, meaning there is no longer a need for such international punishment. That the Security Council is unlikely to agree on this simple and happy conclusion at its meeting today -- and may, in fact, spend weeks or months in bitter debate over it -- is further testimony to the cynical diplomacy of Russia and France. But it is also a reflection of the Bush administration's failure to pursue the multinational partnership in postwar Iraq that the president repeatedly promised.

France and Russia enter the latest Security Council round with more leverage than they had before the Iraq war. By blocking a council decision on sanctions, they could make it impossible for Iraq to sell its oil or even feed itself; under the oil-for-food program, the United Nations controls all of Iraq's oil revenue as well as its imports. Russia claims that it is only following U.N. requirements that inspectors certify Iraq's disarmament. Yet both Moscow and Paris fought to have the sanctions lifted when Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein; at that time they opposed any link to inspections. That they may now reverse themselves reveals their underlying interest in the privileged position they held as economic partners of Saddam Hussein. The dictator's former favorites want to keep their contracts; they also would like to force the United States to accept U.N. leadership in postwar Iraq, thereby advancing their contain-America strategy. Their blocking action would harm Iraqis most of all; by impeding reconstruction, they would also show themselves, even more than with their prewar maneuvering, to be untrustworthy as allies.

U.S. officials are betting that this morally repugnant stance will prove unsustainable. Yet the Bush administration is making an impasse more likely with the relentless pursuit of its own narrow agenda. Though the president has variously promised "partnership" or "a vital role" for the United Nations in postwar Iraq, on the ground the Pentagon is rapidly creating an administration that excludes the United Nations and every other nation except Britain. In advocating the lifting of sanctions, the administration is, in effect, proposing that control of Iraq's oil wealth be transferred from the United Nations to the occupation authority headed by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner. That prospect is unsettling not just to U.S. rivals and adversaries but also to many countries that supported the Iraq campaign.

U.S. diplomats say they may seek to break the Security Council's decision-making on Iraq into stages. By the time a vote is necessary on the oil-for-food program, which expires in early June, a U.S.-orchestrated transition to a new Iraqi administration may be so far advanced that French and Russian objections will be easily discarded. Yet that approach will work only if the administration succeeds in constructing a new Iraqi regime with a speed that is historically unprecedented. The United States can sustain its unilateral military rule of Iraq only for a few months without inviting a violent backlash from Iraqis and other Arabs.

There is no need for such a high-risk policy. The Bush administration could better protect U.S. interests and improve the chances of a successful postwar transition if it quickly invited more allies and more multilateral institutions to join in Iraq's reconstruction. U.N. and other international experts could help in the process of forming a transition government; Arab and European peacekeepers could take some of the burden off U.S. troops. U.N. weapons inspectors could provide critical validation of U.S. discoveries of weapons of mass destruction. Another international brawl over Iraq is not inevitable, but the Bush administration, as much as France and Russia, must act if one is to be avoided.