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US, Russia may revise Iraq embargo rules
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, March 21 (Reuters) - The United States and Russia hope to reach agreement soon on a revision of sanctions regulations for Iraq and have scheduled another meeting in Moscow next week.
At issue are negotiations over the "goods review list" of supplies to Iraq that U.N. Security Council members have to review separately. Items not on the list can go to Iraq without council scrutiny after approval from U.N. officials.
Currently most imports are evaluated separately by a Security Council sanctions committee, any one of whose members can block a contract. The United States has stopped some $5 billion worth of goods to the dismay of the other council members.
But some may be released after the list is completed.
Gennady Gatilov, a senior diplomat in Russia's U.N. mission said the talks were going well but a number of outstanding issues still had to be resolved.
But he said negotiators for both sides, who meet in Moscow on March 27-28, were "in a constructive mood."
A U.S. official agreed, saying "the talks were going smoothly." The hope, diplomats said, was to have an agreement by the May 23-26 summit in Moscow and St. Petersburg between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
The summit is only days before the U.N. Security Council is due to renew the so-called "oil-for-food" humanitarian program, under which the goods review list falls.
Iraq has been under Security Council sanctions since shortly after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. To ease the impact on civilians, the oil-for-food program, an exception to the embargoes, allows Iraq to sell oil and buy food, medicine and a host of other goods.
But the oil revenues go into a U.N. account, which pays the suppliers, depriving Baghdad of cash. The new goods review list will not change those procedures.
The list originally was part of a package of "smart" sanctions proposed by the United States and British to ease the flow of civilian supplies to Iraq while stopping military goods. That plan, however, is now all but abandoned.
The renewal of the oil-for-food program is separate from Iraq's refusal to admit U.N. weapons inspectors, a key condition for suspending the sanctions.
If Russia, Baghdad's closest ally on the Security Council, and the United States come to an agreement, few expect a diplomatic crisis at the end of May over the humanitarian program or anticipate Baghdad will protest by shutting off oil flows as it has done for brief times in the past.
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