[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 60 (Monday, May 16, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   ON LIFTING U.N. SANCTIONS ON IRAQ

   Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I rise today to voice my strong 
concern over a proposal by Turkey to partially lift the U.N. sanctions 
against Iraq to allow Turkey to flush out some 12 billion barrels of 
oil from the pipeline which passes through Turkey. Turkey claims that 
the oil will be used for domestic purposes and will not be let out into 
the world market. It is my understanding that the administration will 
not object to such a move, should it come before the United Nations.
  If this is in fact true, this could set a terrible precedent and 
provide Iraq a foot in the door to accomplishing its goal since its 
invasion of Kuwait: an end to the total U.N. embargo placed against it.
  Mr. President, let there be no ambiguity about this, in no way, 
shape, or form can the U.N. sanctions be lifted on Iraq until it fully 
complies with all the U.N. resolutions. Now is the time for resolve, 
not appeasement.
  Mr. President, I ask that the following article from Time be included 
in the Record following my remarks.
  The article follows:

                          No Longer Fenced In

                          (By Thomas Sanction)

       Paris.--On March 3, 1991, under a hastily pitched tent at 
     Safwan air base in southern Iraq, General Norman Schwarzkopf 
     gazed across the table at two grim-faced Iraqi generals and 
     calmly dictated cease-fire terms that put an end to the six-
     week Gulf War. Stunned to learn that the U.S.-led forces had 
     captured more than 60,000 of his soldiers, Iraqi Lieut. 
     General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Jabbari acceded to each and 
     every condition. ``His face went completely pale,'' 
     Schwarzkopf later recounted. ``He had had no concept of the 
     magnitude of their defeat.''
       Nor has the regime of Saddam Hussein fully accepted its 
     defeat to this day. Although the West expected his warmaking 
     capacity to be blunted once and for all, Saddam has gone back 
     to business as usual. In defiance of U.N. sanctions that ban 
     nonhumanitarian trade and clamp an embargo on arms sales to 
     Baghdad, he is working to rebuild his military and industrial 
     might. Helping him are middlemen, front companies, compliant 
     neighbors and Western businessmen eager to reforge commercial 
     contacts with a big potential customer and the possessor of 
     the world's second-largest oil reserves.
       Saddam doesn't always have to defy the U.N. to achieve his 
     goals. Although Security Council resolutions forbid Iraq to 
     possess or develop weapons of mass destruction, they place no 
     such ban on his conventional-arms industry. Using a 
     clandestine technology-procurement network never fully 
     dismantled, Saddam continues to buy spare parts for T-72 
     tanks in China and Russia, antitank and air-defense missiles 
     from Bulgaria, and may now be turning to West European firms 
     for critical electronics for his air force. At the same time, 
     he has pressed forward with Iraq's ballistic-missile research 
     at newly built laboratories. With a leaner and meaner 
     fighting machine of about 400,000 troops, Iraq still has the 
     largest army in the region.
       Anticipating the end of sanctions, Iraq has negotiated a 
     batch of trade agreements with France, Turkey and Russia, and 
     has even been discussing new contracts with U.S. companies. A 
     loophole in the sanctions allows foreign companies to set up 
     deals with Iraq that will take effect once the U.N. embargo 
     is lifted. The French, Italians, Russians and Turks have 
     interpreted this to mean they can enter contractual 
     relationships; the U.S. has not. ``It would be stupid for us 
     to be the last ones in, when everyone else is lining up to 
     sign contracts for Iraq's reconstruction,'' says General 
     Jeannou Lacaze, retired chief of staff of the French armed 
     forces.
       Saddam is already on the verge of winning an important U.N. 
     concession: a partial reopening of Iraq's oil pipeline 
     through Turkey. Periodically Baghdad will be allowed to 
     ``flush'' the pipeline of old oil--which the Turks claim is 
     corroding the pipe--and fill it with fresh oil. Each flush 
     will yield about 12 million bbl. of marketable oil, which 
     would net Iraq some $50 million, and there could be several 
     such operations every year.
       Turkish officials, who say they are sacrificing $250 
     million annually in lost pipeline fees, insist that Iraq will 
     get only humanitarian aid--not cash--in exchange for its oil. 
     They promise to refine and use the oil domestically, so it 
     will not upset the world petroleum market. The very idea of 
     limited oil sales for Iraq is anathema to the U.S. But 
     Washington will reluctantly go along with the Security 
     Council plan because the U.S. does not want to offend Turkey, 
     an important friend that allows American jets based on its 
     soil to patrol Iraqi airspace. ``Turkey is a good ally,'' 
     says an American diplomat at the U.N. ``We are sympathetic to 
     Turkey's needs.''
       This week, as he does every 60 days, Iraq's Deputy Prime 
     Minister Tariq Aziz will meet with the U.N. sanctions 
     committee in New York City to argue for an end to the 
     embargo. His previous entreaties were flatly rejected, but 
     this time he will find growing support. Three of the five 
     permanent members--France, Russia and China--want the trade 
     bans eased. All three stand to win lucrative contracts to 
     repair Iraq's infrastructure. France and Russia, among 
     Saddam's major prewar trading partners, hope Baghdad could 
     begin paying off its massive debts.
       The U.S. and Britain insist that Iraq must first comply 
     with every condition in the U.N. resolutions that ended the 
     Gulf War. Baghdad argues that its recent cooperation with 
     U.N. arms inspections is compliance enough. But U.S. 
     officials doubt Saddam has renounced his dreams of regional 
     dominance. Moreover, he is violating the U.N. resolutions on 
     two key points by refusing to acknowledge Kuwait's 
     independence and by committing human-rights violations 
     against Iraq's Kurds and Shi`ites. Says Secretary of State 
     Warren Christopher: ``The stakes are too high to give Iraq 
     the benefit of the doubt or to let our policy be dictated by 
     commercial interests or simple fatigue.''
       No one doubts that the sanctions are biting. Inflation in 
     Iraq has soared to 250% of prewar levels, while living 
     standards have plunged by half. Both as a money-saving move 
     and a hedge against defections of senior diplomats, Baghdad 
     has recently had to close 15 embassies. The question facing 
     Western policymakers is whether Saddam's intensified 
     lobbying to end the embargo shows last-ditch desperation 
     which would argue for keeping up the pressure in hopes of 
     toppling the regime, or whether Saddam has successfully 
     ridden out the storm. In any event, his strategy is clever 
     and multipronged:


                           tactical two-step

       The pipeline deal is the first tangible gain from a 
     tactical about-face by Saddam. After resisting efforts to 
     monitor his capabilities for nuclear, biological and chemical 
     warfare, he suddenly announced last November that his regime 
     would comply fully with U.N. inspectors. Since then, Iraq 
     appears to have done so.
       Hans Blix, director general of the International Atomic 
     Energy Agency, reported last October that ``in all essential 
     aspects, the nuclear-weapons program is mapped and has been 
     destroyed through the war or neutralized thereafter.'' Rolf 
     Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. monitoring team, believes 
     Baghdad's chemical programs have been dismantled. Ekeus is 
     also confident that his men have accounted for all 890 Scud-B 
     missiles Iraq bought from the Soviet Union during the 1970s 
     and '80s. But he still has doubts that Iraq has destroyed its 
     biological-weapons program.
       Saddam's aim is plainly to fulfill the letter of U.N. law 
     by coming clean about Iraq's unconventional-weapons programs 
     in order to get the sanctions lifted. But monitors like Ekeus 
     suspect he has no intention of obeying the spirit of the ban. 
     Iraq may already be secretly reviving its long-range missile 
     program. Scientists continue to pursue ballistic-missile 
     research, not only at sites destroyed during the war and 
     rebuilt, such as the Saad 16 research and development center 
     near Mosul, but in new facilities such as Ibn al-Haytham lab, 
     constructed near Baghdad. While U.N. resolutions allow Iraq 
     to build short-range rockets with a range under 93 miles, a 
     U.N. expert notes ``the same technology used to make a 
     missile that flies 93 miles can be used on one that flies 400 
     or 1,200 miles.''
       U.N. inspectors insist on long-term monitoring to make sure 
     Iraq does not resume development of mass-destruction weapons 
     once sanctions are eased. ``The Security Council does not 
     trust Iraq's intentions,'' says Ekeus, ``and for as long as 
     that suspicion continues, we will continue our monitoring 
     efforts.''


                            shopping network

       There are clear indications that Saddam has reopened his 
     high-tech procurement network. In June 1993 the Egyptian navy 
     intercepted a freighter carrying hydrochloric acid from India 
     outside the Gulf of Aqaba. Experts said Iraq could use the 
     chemical for uranium enrichment.
       Six months later, German and Saudi officials detained a 
     German-registered ship, the Asian Senator, as it steamed past 
     a Saudi port en route to Beirut. On board, they seized two 
     containers of Chinese-produced ammonium perchlorate, an 
     essential ingredient for solid-fuel rockets and ballistic 
     missiles. Though the ostensible destination was Lebanon, U.N. 
     monitors and U.S. officials confirmed that the real end user 
     was Iraq's long-range missile program.
       U.S. customs officials are investigating half a dozen cases 
     in which Iraq allegedly broke sanctions. However, ``for every 
     case we see,'' says one of the agents, ``there's probably a 
     hundred potential violators out there.'' According to 
     congressional investigators, many front companies established 
     in the late 1980s to purchase parts and technology for 
     Saddam's weapons programs continue to operate in France, 
     Switzerland, Germany, Britain and the U.S. Last month 
     American customs agents arrested a pair of Jordanian 
     nationals, Al. M. Harb and his wife Rula Saba Harb, on 
     charges of using a home-based front company in Midlothian, 
     Virginia, to circumvent the Iraqi embargo. Court documents 
     show that the couple made more than 100 shipments to Iraq 
     over the past three years, including equipment that could be 
     used for ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. ``These 
     aren't the Rosenbergs,'' says a customs agent. ``But we have 
     established that they shipped equipment and spare parts of 
     potential use to a revived Iraqi bomb program.'' The couple 
     have been indicted for violating the Iraq embargo and will go 
     on trial in mid-June.
       To finance its arms programs, Baghdad is constantly trying 
     to persuade the U.N. to release its billions of dollars of 
     frozen assets on the pretext of buying ``humanitarian'' 
     supplies. So far, with the agreement of the sanctions 
     committee, the Iraqis have managed to get back more than $250 
     million for humanitarian purchases, most of it from British 
     and Swiss banks.


                              old friends

       France, which enjoyed cozy commercial ties with Iraq before 
     the war, is particularly eager to loosen trade strictures. So 
     far, the war and the embargo have cost taxpayers an estimated 
     $8.7 billion in unpaid government-guaranteed loans, and Paris 
     wants to get the money back.
       At the same time, French companies that did big business 
     with Baghdad want to resume a lucrative connection. State-
     owned oil giants Elf Aquitaine and Total were the first 
     Western firms to make contact with Baghdad after the war. 
     Iraqi authorities proposed to give the two French 
     companies a rich production monopoly developing the 
     Majnoun Islands and Nahr Umar oilfields, which could 
     produce 1 million bbl. a day. In exchange, the Iraqis 
     wanted the French to lobby for lifting U.N. sanctions. 
     Since then, according to the weekly Canard Enchaine, 
     representatives of the two companies have made more than 
     40 trips to Baghdad and preliminary contracts have been 
     drawn up. The French government has frozen the deal until 
     sanctions are lifted, though a Foreign Ministry spokesman 
     insists that ``we have nothing against such contacts.''
       Baghdad is trying to attract Russia by offering major 
     contracts for oil exploration and rebuilding refineries. In 
     February the Italian gas company Italgaz sent a high-level 
     delegation to Iraq, followed last month by representatives of 
     30 leading Italian companies, including Fiat autos and 
     International Scientifica, a medical-equipment maker. 
     British, German and Japanese firms have also been poking 
     around the bazaar.
       Nor have Americans been wholly absent. According to Western 
     diplomats and business travelers, agents of Occidental 
     Petroleum, Chevron, Boeing, General Motors and others have 
     been spotted in the first-class hotels of Baghdad and Amman, 
     Jordan, where many of the meetings with Iraqi trade officials 
     take place. State Department officials say they have 
     investigated these claims and found no sign of wrongdoing by 
     U.S. companies, who are ``officially discouraged'' from 
     making such contacts. Says a State Department official: ``The 
     Iraqis are engaged in a constant effort to get companies to 
     deal with them quickly. They want them to believe the train 
     is leaving the station and that they will be left behind if 
     they don't jump on board.''
       Considering the potentially dire consequences--economic, 
     military and diplomatic--of a hasty return to doing business 
     with Iraq, the U.S. wants to err on the side of caution. That 
     is also the position of the U.N. inspectors, who bear primary 
     responsibility for making sure that Saddam's infernal death 
     machine does not spring back to life. If the sanctions are 
     lifted and the Iraqis renege on their promises, putting the 
     restrictions back again may prove to be too little, too 
     late.

                          ____________________