Helping Iraq Without Aiding Hussein : The trick is to set up a U.N. escrow account for oil proceeds

Saddam Hussein’s cynicism knows no bounds. The cat-and-mouse game he’s playing with U.N. requirements that he halt Iraq’s nuclear weapons program has been disingenuous and infuriating. And he’s keeping his soldiers and supporters well fed and tended while the majority of Iraqis bear the brunt of his military failure in Kuwait: starvation, disease and crime.

It’s time to undermine his iron grip on the country by providing the Iraqi people with food and comfort. The trick will be doing it in such a way that doesn’t shore up Hussein’s declining popular support.

The U.N. Security Council is considering whether to permit a special humanitarian exemption from the sanctions imposed on the Baghdad regime after its invasion of Kuwait nearly a year ago. The exemption would allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to raise money to buy badly needed food and medicine. Iraq has asked for permission to sell $1.5 billion in oil to raise the money for food and medicine.

Though the U.N. sanctions prevent Iraqi oil sales, humanitarian shipments of food and medicine are permitted. But emergency supplies are extremely short and Iraqis are going hungry and suffering from malnutrition and disease, according to medical experts, U.N. officials and media reports. Food shortages have resulted in rampant inflation, price gouging and an unprecedented wave of crime.

Clearly, providing more food would serve real humanitarian needs. The problem is that Hussein has so far failed to live up to the commitments he made in exchange for a cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War, especially his promise to provide reliable information about his programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. So the challenge is to ensure that Iraq doesn’t use a veil of humanitarian need as a cover to hoard food or to get cash that could be used to buy new weapons or finance terrorism.

Saddam is just plain untrustworthy--to put it diplomatically--so not one penny from oil sales should be allowed to reach his hands. But if done right, an Iraqi relief program could provide a strategic opening to secure wider foreign access to Iraq, still largely isolated as a pariah state in the war’s aftermath, and even to establish some international control over Saddam Hussein’s purse strings.

This can best be achieved by setting up a U.N.-administered escrow account to collect all proceeds from Iraqi oil sales and hold them. The Baghdad regime should also be required to deposit in the U.N. fund all proceeds from the 55,000 barrels of oil it sells through Jordan each day.

The fund, in turn, would pay for all of Iraq’s food and medicine purchases and any other humanitarian needs that may arise as Iraq tries to recover from the war. Iraq should also be required to admit U.N. or other international relief agency personnel to monitor the distribution of food supplies. That would raise the foreign presence in Iraq.

The proposal sent to the Security Council by the sanctions committee also calls for about 30% of Iraq’s oil revenues to be set aside for war reparations and to go to the U.N. fund established to compensate victims of Iraq’s invasion. That is reasonable.

The Bush Administration is studying the plan, which would be a major policy shift from its staunch backing of the stiff sanctions imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Britain, too, has indicated interest in the plan.

The shift is a pragmatic and necessary response to the suffering of the Iraqi people and the fact that Saddam’s power continues despite the embargo and his declining popularity.

President Bush vowed that the United States would not permit the “suffering of innocent women and children” in Iraq. Food relief is crucial to letting the Iraqi people know the world cares about them, even if their cruel leader doesn’t. That just might give them the will to defy him.