Now that the threat of a military conflict with Iraq over United Nations arms inspections has receded, serious consideration must be given to how and when the sanctions against that country should be lifted. As this newspaper's correspondent, Lara Marlowe, has so graphically and poignantly reported this week, they have inflicted far-reaching and horrendous damage on the civilian population, which has been reduced, in a few short years, to penury and set back possibly for generations of development. Child deaths, grave shortages of the most basic health materials and foodstuffs, an infrastructure destroyed by bombings and left to deteriorate, and now a previously unreported and widespread outbreak of cancer attributed to arms used in the last Gulf war, have all added to the human devastation involved.
Sanctions have bolstered not weakened Saddam Hussein, whose henchmen have profited from smuggling and black marketeering. The crisis of the last few weeks has also left him in a stronger position. It is a wretched complex of human suffering, policy impasse and dangerous military potential. But there are elements involved that could be steered towards a resolution of the confrontation over arms inspections and therefore towards a lifting of the sanctions, and which would allow conditions of everyday life to be improved.
If this is to happen, it is essential that the Iraqi government should implement the recent agreement on arms inspections it reached with the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan. He referred specifically to the possibility that sanctions could be lifted at his press conference in Baghdad after the agreement was signed. The Security Council has now passed a resolution warning of the "severest consequences" if the agreement is not implemented, and Mr Annan has himself underlined how seriously he would regard such a failure. It would be very difficult for him to resist pressure for a military strike were this to happen, even though the US and Britain did not succeed in having an automatic strike agreed. It would be better, by far, for Iraq to implement the agreement and insist on the sanctions being lifted. Their unspoken function in the eyes of British and US leaders, to rein in and contain the threat Saddam Hussein poses to the entire Middle Eastern region, lacks a valid legal basis and is less credible given their refusal to contemplate a ground war to get rid of him. The recent crisis has sharpened the resolve of France, Russia and China, the other permanent members of the Security Council, to find a diplomatic solution and to rule out a military attack without a fresh resolution. They should now exert pressure on the Iraqis to implement the arms inspection agreement in return for support for the sanctions to be lifted. This would be necessary to relieve pressure on the civilian population, above and beyond the limited but recently increased resources made available through the UN's food for oil deal. Such a shake-out would be at least as likely to regenerate confidence among the Iraqi population to express their dissatisfaction with Saddam Hussein and relax the ideological grip, that is reinforced by sanctions, as any military strike directed against his armaments base.