Ten years after the start of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein is still in power and economic sanctions against Iraq are still in force.

Milan Rai, is a humanitarian aid co-ordinator who has been on missions to Iraq, where he says he has seen children dying of hunger. He is against sanctions

Peter Rodman, is a former adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush, who says the Iraqi people are suffering because of Saddam Hussein's cruelty. He wants sanctions to continue.

---

Milan Rai Joint Co-ordinator, Voices in the Wilderness UK

We should lift the economic sanctions against Iraq - but to be persuasive, an argument for doing so must establish three propositions: 1) That there is a humanitarian crisis in Iraq
2) That the economic sanctions are a major obstacle to the solution of this crisis
3) That measures short of lifting economic sanctions cannot end the suffering that has engulfed millions of ordinary families for the last 10 years.

A defence of the sanctions regime only has to overturn one of these propositions to succeed. Alternatively, a purported defence of sanctions can abandon international law and simple morality, and assert that the basic human rights of the 22 million people of Iraq, including their rights to life, are null and void, and they may be killed at our convenience.

I have visited children's wards in Iraqi hospitals. I've seen bone-thin children dying quietly of hunger and disease. This is not an academic exercise.

---

Peter Rodman, Nixon Centre Washington:

The humanitarian "exceptions" to UN sanctions are now so broad that Iraq should be prospering. Iraq is now the world's second largest oil exporter - its GDP per capita is higher than Syria's and food available is close to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) optimum. Yet there is real suffering in Iraq due to Saddam Hussein's indifference and his siphoning off of resources to rebuild his palaces and military machine.

Thus the danger Saddam still poses. Years ago he could have got UN sanctions lifted if he had relinquished his weapons of mass destruction.

He chose instead to maintain those programmes at all costs. Were they to succeed, he would once again be able to bully his neighbours, bid for dominance in the Gulf, and seek a stranglehold over the energy lifeline of the West. Further easing of sanctions would dangerously erode the constraints that now prevent this.

---

Milan Rai

We agree there is real suffering in Iraq. Why blame Baghdad's 'siphoning off of resources'? It is physically impossible for oil-for-food revenues (in a UN-controlled account in New York) to be siphoned anywhere.

The comparison with Syria is also peculiar. Is 30% of Syria's GDP being 'siphoned off' for a UN-controlled compensation fund?

Is Syria recovering from an estimated $232bn of bomb damage to civilian infrastructure and economic assets incurred during the 1991 war?

The FAO said in 1995 that the nutritional crisis could only be overcome by adequate food supplies in the country, restoring the viability of the Iraqi Dinar, and enabling ordinary families to acquire "adequate purchasing power".

It concluded: "These conditions can be fulfilled only if the economy can be put back in proper shape enabling it to draw on its own resources, and that clearly cannot occur as long as the embargo remains in force."

Even the Un Security Council doesn't believe the current oil-for-food programme can solve the humanitarian crisis. Resolution 1284 promised the suspension of sanctions "with the fundamental objective of improving the humanitarian situation in Iraq".

The current framework cannot end the suffering - which we both agree is real.

---

Peter Rodman:

Saddam Hussein's Iraq is one of the most brutal, fascistic regimes on the face of the Earth. The suffering that he, I repeat, he inflicts on his own people should not be falsely attributed to the world community's efforts to contain him.

Extensive resources are available to Iraq, through oil sales and imports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods long permitted under sanctions.

The people's suffering is caused by Saddam Hussein's diversion of those resources to building new palaces for his henchmen, to rebuilding his military machine, and to clandestine programmes for acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

An Iraqi Government for which the welfare of its people was a priority would allocate those resources to them, and indeed would relinquish the weapons programs that are the main reason for sanctions.

Should UN sanctions be dismantled, Saddam Hussein would trumpet his victory and tighten his repression. Contraband technology would be much harder to block. It would heighten the danger to Iraq's neighbors. The most humane course of all would be to hasten the regime's demise. Sanctions alone, to be sure, are not enough. A more vigorous policy of arming and supporting an internal opposition is really what is called for.

---

Milan Rai

We appear to agree that a humanitarian crisis exists. Two different causes have been suggested - the impact of the economic sanctions, far exceeding the remedial capacity of the oil-for-food humanitarian programme; or Saddam's diversion of those (oil-for-food) resources to non-humanitarian ends.

The former view is held by Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who oversaw oil-for-food on behalf of the UN Security Council, and who resigned in protest against the sanctions in mid-1998 and in February 2000 respectively.

Extensive resources are available now because of recent oil price rises, but they are still inadequate, and there are long delays before such earnings turn into installed public health infrastructure goods.

Some $20.4bn has been earned for humanitarian purposes under oil-for-food. What proportion has been diverted? How? Only by answering these two questions can assertion become argument.

---

Peter Rodman

Imports of food or medicine have never been limited by UN sanctions. In addition, the oil-for-food programme will provide an estimated $20.4 bn in revenue this year, a fivefold increase since it began.

If this doesn't improve the Iraqi people's welfare, it is because Saddam is not interested in that result. In northern Iraq, where the UN controls the relief effort, child mortality is lower than before the Gulf War; in central and southern Iraq, where Saddam Hussein controls it, mortality rates have doubled. It is Saddam Hussein who has been accused by the UN of deliberately hoarding medicines in warehouses.

It is Saddam Hussein who has rejected UN recommendations to increase protein-enriched goods for malnourished children and pregnant women. Iraq, in fact, has been caught exporting dates, corn, and grain even while it complains that Iraqis are starving.

The oil-for-food revenues have encouraged Saddam to divert resources for rebuilding the Republican Guard (his elite troops) since the Gulf War; building and maintaining nearly 80 palaces and VIP residences for his family and loyalists; and rebuilding military facilities destroyed in Operation Desert Fox.

---

Milan Rai The assertion seems now to be that non-oil-for-food funds formerly directed to humanitarian ends are now being used otherwise.

The questions now become: What is the size of these (non-oil-for-food) resources, and are they able to bridge the gap between oil-for-food and the size of the humanitarian crisis?

So far, I have cited the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, two former humanitarian co-ordinators, and Security Council Resolution 1284 in support of the contention that economic sanctions are a major obstacle to the solution of the humanitarian crisis.

So far, you have merely repeated your assertion that the cause is diversion.

---

Peter Rodman

If there is hardship in Iraq, it has three causes. One is that the benefit of the considerable revenues available to Iraq from the oil-for-food scheme ($20.4 bn in 2000) is blunted by the regime's obstruction. The regime hoards medicines, ignores UN advice, and otherwise impedes distribution. Food and medicine, to repeat, are not embargoed.

Saddam Hussein uses the oil-for-food scheme as another excuse to evade responsibility. Whatever resources are generated by the Iraqi economy (domestic production, smuggled exports) are diverted in significant part to military uses and to buy the continued loyalty of those who bolster the regime.

The main point - and the reason why sanctions are still imposed - is Saddam Hussein's absolute refusal to abandon his programmes for building nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. Unscom documented this thoroughly - which is why he destroyed Unscom.

Those who want sanctions removed should bring pressure to bear on Saddam Hussein , not on those who are trying to shield the Middle East from his fascistic, predatory, and destructive designs.