"IRAQ SANCTIONS QUESTIONED"

Thirty Three House Democrats and a lone Republican urged President Clinton yesterday to lift 8 year-old economic sanctions against Iraq that were imposed after its invasion of Kuwait. "this is the beginnig of a broad questioig of the viability of sanctions regimes," said Phyllis Benis, a policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington policy group.

She joined other policy experts at a briefing for reporters and congressional staff on Capitol Hill hosted by the Arab-American Institute.

The House members, including Rep. Tom Campbell, California Republican, sent a letter to PResident Clinton yesterday calling on the administration to "re-examine the intended goals and the actual effects of these sanctions."

"Congressmen Campbell feels we need to take a step back and re-examine the sanctions regime," Said Suhail Khan, spokesman for Mr. Campbell, the onlly Republican to join with the Democrats. "Mr [Saddam] Hussein is using the economic sanctions as an excuse not to feed those who are suffering", he said.

The United Nations imposed the sanctions after the Aug. 2, 1990, invasion and they cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors declare Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq is permitted to sell $5 Billion worth of oil every six months. But the sanctions have prevented Iraq from importing the materials necessary to rebuild the oil infrastructure that was destroyed in the 1991 bombing of Iraq, humanitarian workeres have argued.

Iraq says about 1.5 million children have died in the past seven years form disease and malnutrition directly attributed to the sanctions. "Sanctions are not the clean alternative to war that we thought they were," said Khalid Elgindy, who delivered humanitarian aid to Iraqis in May with a U.S. group called the International Relief Association.

More people have died as a result of the sanctions in the last eight years than died during the allied bombing in 1991," he told reporters. He said 1 million people had died since the sanctions were imposed.

The United States opposes ending the sanctions.

The power to lift the sanctions lies solely with Iraq, P.J. Crowley, a National Security Council spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

"We've carefully sponsored a sanctions regime intended to aid the Iraqi people without aiding Hussein," he said. COngress is beginning to rethink the effectiveness of sanctions, which have become a U.S. foreign policy tool. Sanctions automatically leveled against India and Pakistan because of their nuclear tests in May have forced Congress to re-examine the wisdom of using them.

Congress overwhelmingly voted last week to waive the sanctions to allow Mr. Clinton other diplomatic options.

Also, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has formed a committee to review sanctions legislation and congressional approach to foreign policy.

The letter form the 34 members of Congress, the latest congressional attack on sancitons, led by Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, calls on the administratio to "de-link economic sanctions on Iraq, which have been a political and humanitarian failure, from military sanctions."

Note to Activist: The National Security Council's response is based on a fallacy. The fallacy is that the sanctions are an American and Security Council policy which addresses a wrong. The policy instrument is genocidal that is the issue. The policy instrument of sanctions is what is killing not the original cause of Iraqs invasion of Kuwait. Also, the letter remains open to signatures. Additionally, P.J. Crowley (NSC Advisor for Iraq) was seen on Friday July 31, 1998 in front of the White House viscerally yelling at Catholic Workers from behind his gold plated Marksman glasses like CIA spooks wear that he wanted "Saddam Hussein to die!" (nostrils flaring). A very strange response when the question was about the sanctions on Iraq. Does the National Security Council even realize there is a difference between Iraqs dictator and the people of Iraq, as the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship do?

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