Global Policy Forum

By Nicole Winfield

What should have been a perfunctory Security Council vote to extend the U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq erupted into acrimonious debate early today, with Russia criticizing sanctions and U.S. and British airstrikes against Iraq.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov took the floor of the council chamber three times, delivering a bristling critique of the sanctions, the air patrols and the council's overall failure to solve the Iraq crisis after 10 years.

"We're trying to deal with the symptoms - to ease the symptoms of the disease - but we're not dealing with the crux of the problem," Lavrov said in a rambling, off-the-cuff speech.

He was joined in his criticism by deputy Chinese ambassador Shen Guofang, who decried the impact of the airstrikes but expressed some optimism that a study the council authorized Thursday night would assess the humanitarian impact that the strikes have caused.

The United States and Britain have been enforcing northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq since the end of the Persian Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north from Iraq's army. The allies say their regular aerial attacks hit only military targets, but Iraq often claims civilians are injured or killed.

"These bombings have caused suffering," Shen said.

The debate came during discussion on a resolution to keep the U.N. relief program, due to expire at midnight, running for another six months. Iraq is still suffering under strict U.N. sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The relief program, launched in 1996, allows Iraq to use proceeds from U.N.-supervised oil sales to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods for its people.

The new resolution also allows Iraq to spend $600 million from its oil sales on spare parts for its oil industry and lets it buy water and sanitation equipment without approval from the council's sanctions committee.

In Cairo, Iraq's trade minister said the oil-for-food program was doing little to help the Iraqi people. Out of $29 billion earned since the program began in 1996, Iraq has access to only $7 billion, the rest set aside for paying U.N. expenses in Iraq or compensation to Gulf War victims, Mohammed Mehdi Saleh said.

The program has "failed to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people, and Iraq now calls it the oil-for-U.N. expenses" program, the minister said, quoted by Egypt's Middle East News Agency.

The sticking point in negotiations at the United Nations this week revolved around calls from countries sympathetic to Iraq's plight for a study of the impact sanctions have had on the Iraqi people.

France had led the push for such a study. Thursday afternoon, it agreed to a more general study after Britain and the United States argued that the effects of two wars and government policies also had a bearing on the state of ordinary Iraqis.

The final text of the resolution calls for a panel of experts to prepare a "comprehensive report and analysis of the humanitarian situation in Iraq," by November 26.

U.S. and British officials defended their policies against the Russian and Chinese assault.

British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said the no-fly zone patrols were authorized under resolutions calling for the protection of Iraqi minorities. And the deputy American ambassador, James Cunningham, said it was "disingenuous" to suggest that the limited airstrikes impact the overall humanitarian situation in Iraq.