Mix of Uses Tangles Sanctions
U.S. Blocks Items to Iraq That Other Nations See as Benign
By Colum Lynch
Special to The
Washington Post
Monday, March 26, 2001; Page A21
UNITED NATIONS -- As the Bush administration seeks to revamp the U.N. economic
sanctions on Iraq, the predicament facing Siemens AG, the German electronics
firm, underscores the challenge of untangling restrictions on military imports
from those on more benign civilian products.
During the last year, Siemens has sought U.N. approval to sell Iraq more than $14 million in medical equipment to help modernize the country's hospitals. But the United States has placed a freeze on nearly $11 million of it, citing concerns that computers that operate cardiac machines, called angiographs, included in the deal could be used to run weapons systems, according to diplomats and confidential U.N. documents.
Much of the equipment that Iraq says it needs for upgrading its health, oil and other key industries can be converted to military uses. And Iraq has a long history of using civilian industrial programs to develop prohibited nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
By the end of last month, the United States had placed "holds" on $280 million in medical supplies alone, including orders for vaccines, laboratory growth medium, incubators and a host of high-tech machines used to produce pills or to eliminate kidney stones without surgery, according to U.N. documents.
The items are among more than 1,500 contracts, amounting to about $3.3 billion, that Security Council members have frozen. The United States has blocked the vast majority of the proposed sales, about $3.1 billion worth, requesting further information on the products or citing their possible military applications.
"Many of these materials have a potential use in preparing chemical or biological weapons," said George Parshall, a chemical weapons expert. "But they are exactly the kinds of things you need to keep pharmaceutical, electrical and oil industries going."
An essential element of the Bush administration's plan to overhaul the 11-year-old sanctions is streamlining the U.N. approval process to minimize holds.
American officials recognize that holds have become a major irritant between the United States and other countries. Critics argue that the United States is withholding essential medical supplies with only marginal military applications and depriving ordinary Iraqis of vital humanitarian relief.
Yves Doutriaux, France's deputy U.N. ambassador, accused the United States of having no "concern for the safety of children" after Washington placed holds last month on two contracts from South Korean and Yugoslav companies for vaccines to treat infant hepatitis, tetanus and diphtheria. The United States, which fears that life-saving vaccines would be converted into deadly biological weapons, has since approved the two deals, according to U.N. diplomats.
The United States, on similar grounds, has objected to a range of products, including a chemical used to treat heart arrhythmia and equipment that produces shock waves to pulverize kidney stones. The former can be used in connection with military nerve agents, and the latter could contain an electronic switch useful in building detonators for a nuclear bomb, officials said.
Benon Sevan, head of the U.N.'s humanitarian program, meanwhile, said that
restrictions on computer imports are ludicrous. The current list prohibits any
computer that exceeds a speed of 12.5 million theoretical operations per second
(MTOPS) -- the equivalent of an Intel 486 processor -- on grounds that it has
military applications.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company