DATE=12/01/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-269904

TITLE=JORDAN / PLANE (L)

BYLINE=SCOTT BOBB

DATELINE=CAIRO

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: A Jordanian airliner is back in Amman after a flight to Baghdad that is being billed as the first commercial flight to Iraq since the Gulf War. Jordanian officials say the flight was for humanitarian purposes, but passengers say it was to protest international sanctions against Iraq, as we hear from Correspondent Scott Bobb in our Middle East Bureau in Cairo.

TEXT: The Royal Jordanian Airlines plane returned to Amman Friday with dozens of fare-paying passengers. It flew to Baghdad late Thursday night with doctors, journalists and businessmen. Jordanian government officials say the plane was carrying medicines and other relief supplies for the Iraqi people.

A senior Jordanian official characterized the flight as humanitarian and said the U-N Special Committee on Sanctions had been notified. He did not say if the committee had approved the flight.

U-N sanctions allow humanitarian flights to Iraq, but forbid commercial air travel. In the past three months, dozens of planes have flown to Baghdad's recently re-opened international airport. They have carried food and medical supplies, but also foreign officials and activists who oppose the sanctions against Iraq.

Jordanian Airline officials say passengers on the latest flight were charged 300 dollars for round-trip tickets to Baghdad and characterized the flight as semi-commercial. They indicated the air carrier intends to make regular flights to Baghdad and Iraqi Airways, which last month resumed its international flights for the first time in 10 years, would fly weekly to Amman.

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Iraq has been waging a diplomatic and public relations campaign against the sanctions since it expelled U-N weapons inspectors two years ago in a move that prompted nearly a week of intense aerial bombardments by Britain and the United States.

International support for the sanctions has eroded in recent years, particularly in the Arab world, which believes they have only hurt the Iraqi people while strengthening the Iraqi regime.

Several members of the U-N Security council, Russia, China and France, say they now oppose the sanctions. Russia, in particular, says the sanctions should be ended and is urging Iraq to allow the return of U-N weapons inspectors. Iraqi Deputy-Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who visited Russia and China this past week, has rejected the proposal, although U-N officials say the Iraqi government has agreed to resume negotiations on the matter early next year.

Two other permanent members of the U-N Security Council, Britain and the United States, oppose ending the sanctions until Iraq complies completely with U-N monitoring aimed at ensuring the Iraqi government is not making weapons of mass destruction. Iraq says it no longer has any such weapons and the sanctions are part of a strategy to maintain Western dominance in the Gulf region.

Iraq has made steady progress this year in improving diplomatic and trade relations with its neighbors and other governments in the Middle East. It has re-opened transportation links and oil pipelines to several Arab countries. And it has quietly increased trade outside the authority of the U-N sanctions committee that monitors Iraqi exports and diverts nearly one-third of oil revenues to compensate victims of the Gulf War. (Signed)

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