UN Agrees Long-awaited Smart Sanctions for Iraq

The United Nations security council yesterday finally agreed to an overhaul of sanctions that were imposed against Iraq 11 years ago at the end of the Gulf War.

The 15-member council voted unanimously to replace a blanket ban on a whole range of goods with "smart" sanctions, which are specifically targeted at military and dual-use equipment.

The US and Britain hailed the resolution as a significant change, aimed at meeting humanitarian concerns and easing the sanctions regime. But Iraq dismissed it as cosmetic.

Russia, Iraq's only ally among the big powers, had blocked the move to "smart" sanctions at Iraq's request for more than a year.

The shift in sanctions policy is part of diplomatic manoeu vring, amidst US threats to invade Iraq next year and depose its president, Saddam Hussein.

UN sanctions have been largely discredited in recent years. Most countries want them dropped, but the US and Britain insist that they be kept in place.

Both the US and Britain were urged to make concessions after a humanitarian crisis caused a high death toll in Iraq, including a dispropor tionate number of children.

The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, welcomed the new resolution, claiming it as a British initiative. He said: "It will bring a significant reduction in UN bureaucracy to allow swifter delivery of goods to Iraq."

But Iraq's UN ambassador, Mohammad al-Douri, protested that the new system "will prevent any development of the Iraqi economy for the future" by blocking the import of agricultural, electrical and sanitation equipment.

The Labour backbencher and a leading campaigner against sanctions, George Galloway, expressed scepticism about the significance of the change. "We have been told for the last 11 years that sanctions were already smart," he said. "This may - I stress may - make importing of some goods easier."

The US and Britain insist sanctions are necessary to try to prevent Saddam Hussein developing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. There was a change in the sanctions regime in 1996 to allow in some humanitarian goods, mainly food and medicine, but in theory yesterday's resolution goes further, lifting the ban on all civilian goods and keeping it in place only for military or dual-use goods.

Among goods that will no longer be banned are personal computers; tractors; x-ray equipment for airports and hospitals; irrigation, sewerage and water filtration systems; and cars for personal use.

But the long list of items classified as "dual-use" may prove so ambiguous that Iraq will still be denied many goods regarded as essential for providing decent hospitals, water supplies and education.

In recent years, Iraq's borders have proved to be so porous that smugglers have made a mockery of the sanctions regime. Most goods are available in Baghdad, at least for those with money.

Sanctions cannot be lifted until the UN's weapons inspectors - currently excluded from Iraq - declare that Saddam is not hiding weapons of mass destruction.

The UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is expected to meet an Iraqi delegation on May 30 for a further round of discussions aimed at an agreement to allow the weapons inspectors back in.