DATE=02/23/01

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=RETHINKING SADDAM

NUMBER=5-49041

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Despite sanctions and other forms of pressure, Saddam Hussein remains in power in Iraq, and has even gained stature in the Arab world with the outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. What to do about him is a major preoccupation of the United States. The new Bush administration says it wants to re-energize the sanctions on Iraq, which are fast losing support. Various policy options were discussed at a recent conference held by a prominent Washington research group. V-O-A's Ed Warner reports.

TEXT: All U-S policy options involving Iraq are bad, said Philip Gordon during a recent discussion of long-surviving Saddam Hussein, held by Washington's Brookings Institution.

/// 1ST GORDON ACT ///

The policy that we founded immediately after the Gulf War is crumbling. It is crumbling because Saddam Hussein has outlasted yet another American President. We thought, and all experts predicted, that he would be gone six months after the Gulf War, because of the humiliation that he suffered.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. Gordon, a senior fellow at Brookings, went on to say that sanctions, which were meant to change the regime or at least contain it, have lost support among many countries, which are now dealing with Iraq. The Iraqi opposition has yet to be tested, but he is not especially hopeful.

There is another complicating factor:

/// 2ND GORDON ACT ///

The Israeli-Arab peace process is falling apart, which in turn raises a lot of Arab hostility toward the United States and its policies toward Iraq and sympathy for Saddam Hussein, making it all the more difficult to do sanctions, diplomatic isolation and so on.

/// END ACT ///

Another Brookings fellow, Meghan O'Sullivan, said sanctions must be more narrowly defined to maintain support. They should target Iraqi oil exports and arms acquisitions and contain Saddam Hussein without arousing humanitarian concerns.

/// 1ST O'SULLIVAN ACT ///

That is the challenge to the Bush administration: to show that it is possible to have a sanctions regime that will continue to contain Saddam in a more limited way, but can alleviate humanitarian and commercial pressures that have been so successful at chipping away at the sanctions.

/// END ACT ///

Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings military analyst, said Iraq poses no immediate threat since its armed forces are much reduced. But nobody knows for sure what weapons the Iraqi leader may be developing in secret, now that he is free of international inspection.

Mr. O'Hanlon said a second war with Iraq would be tougher:

/// O'HANLON ACT ///

If we ever do fight Saddam again, I think the war will inherently be more difficult because I think we will elect to overthrow him. Therefore, even though it is not going into jungles and mountains, it is going into forests and a river valley and a city - at least one city, perhaps several. We have not found any technological panacea to storm a city with low casualties.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. O'Hanlon said maintaining the no-fly zone over Iraq is proving to be a strain on the U-S Air Force. It is now punishing the United States more than Saddam Hussein.

Meghan O'Sullivan said a major obstacle to U-S policy is the growing support for the Iraqi leader:

/// 2ND O'SULLIVAN ACT ///

One has to question why it is that a man who commits all these acts of aggression against neighbors on several borders, and against his own population, is able to generate so much credibility and a certain degree of respect among the average citizens of many of these Arab countries.

/// END ACT ///

She answers that Saddam Hussein is applauded for standing up to the United States. That suggests the Bush administration must do some rethinking about U-S policy toward Iraq and the surrounding region. (Signed)

NEB/EW/WTW