UPI
27 April 2001

By DERK KINNANE ROELOFSMA

WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) -- Shortly after taking office Secretary of State Colin
Powell told the press containment of Iraq would be a top Bush administration priority. The
issue with Baghdad, he said, was Saddam's persistence in trying to develop nuclear and
chemical weapons, and his territorial aspirations. "We have to keep reminding everybody
that this is an arms control problem," he said on Feb.1.

Two and a half months later, on April 15, the Sunday Times of London reported that
Saddam was rebuilding a chemical weapons factory at Daura, outside Baghdad. The
news came as Powell was continuing a review of policy on Iraq that he hopes to have in
place by June.

"Give the administration time," says Judith Kipper of the Center for International and
Strategic Studies.

Meanwhile, Saddam, as well as continuing his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, has
become a street hero of the Arab masses as the champion of the Palestinian cause. At the
same time businessmen and their governments, looking for deals, flock to Baghdad to do
business.

When Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, head of Iraq's unconventional weapons
program, defected to the West in 1995, he revealed that Iraq already had a stock of
chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear arms may still be a few years off, but according
to Graham Fuller of the RAND Corporation, it is probably not realistic to think Iraq
will not obtain them.

In an attempt to rescue the U.N. sanctions policy on Iraq from total collapse, Powell
proposed new "smart" sanctions that would relieve the hardships suffered by the
Iraqi people under the old sanctions, while denying Saddam material for weapons.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward Walker describes it as replacing
the sanctions regime with a control regime that would regulate the flow of money to
Saddam and access to military goods and materials used to make weapons of mass
destruction.

It's anybody's guess how the proposed controls regime could undo what Saddam has already
accomplished in building up his capacity to unleash terror and destruction. Saddam has
delivered a firm 'no" to re-admitting U.N. inspection teams to ensure Iraq was not producing
nuclear or chemical weapons. Proposals to install verification posts in neighboring countries
have not been met with enthusiasm in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia -- not to
mention Iran.

Nor is it clear how the controls regime would operate beyond Saddam's abilities to get
around it, all the more so as there has been growing international sympathy for an end to
sanctions, especially from Russia, France and China. Smart sanctions are seen as no better
than the earlier sanctions by Iraq's neighbors -- as well as specialists on Iraq, like Laurie
Mylroie, author of "Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against
America." She is dismissive of a new sanctions regime being any more effective than the old
one.

Sanctions are the first of three baskets that Powell says make up U.S. policy. The second
basket, Powell told Congress in March, concerned military posture and involves enforcement
of the northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq. In line with this, the White House and
State Department assured a delegation of senior Iraqi Kurds recently in Washington that the
United States will continue to protect the Kurds as it has done since it established a safe
haven for them in 1991 and in the following year for the Shia Arabs in the south of Iraq.

The third basket, which many observers currently consider little short of wishful thinking, is
the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

The no-fly zones and U.S. readiness to enforce respect for the Green Line separating
Saddam's army from the Kurds, is the only substantial element left in the old policy of
containing Iraq. The U.S. military umbrella has been essential to the Kurds well-being and
has permitted them to govern themselves, largely free of Baghdad, and, compared to the rest
of Iraq, even to prosper.

The Kurds have direct experience of Saddam's use of weapons of mass destruction. In 1988,
5,000 men, women and children died in five minutes when poison gas was dropped on the
village of Halabja. It was part of the Anfal campaign in which the Iraqi Republican Guards
dragged 182,000 villagers from their homes, never to be heard of again, razed 4000 villages
to the ground, and blew Kurdish towns to bits, building by building.

In recent months the Iraqi army has probed the periphery of the area under Kurdish control.

Although the Kurdish delegation said it was satisfied with what it had heard from U.S.
officials, it nevertheless left an impression of being less than wholly convinced the United
States would insure the Kurds safety. The touch of unease probably stems from the
awareness that the United States does not have a firm policy at this time. One Kurd, asked if
he was satisfied by the U.S. reassurance, replied dryly, "I have heard nothing to make me
doubt it."
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com