Under Pressure, U.S. Agrees to Lift Some Curbs on Iraq

UNITED NATIONS — The United States agreed Friday to double the amount of money Iraq is allowed to spend repairing its oil industry and lifted “holds” on more than $100 million in electrical equipment, vehicles, truck batteries and other items destined for Iraq under an exemption to U.N. sanctions.

The U.S. action came as the U.N. Security Council began an assessment of the humanitarian needs of ordinary Iraqis after nearly a decade of sanctions imposed in response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. By showing some flexibility, the United States hopes to bolster support for keeping the sanctions in place until Iraq abandons its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and accounts for hundreds of Kuwaiti prisoners of war.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan complained that the United States was holding up $1.7 billion of Iraqi purchases under the “oil-for-food” program, an exemption that allows Iraq to use proceeds from oil sales to buy humanitarian supplies.

“The United Nations has always been on the side of the vulnerable and weak . . . yet here we are accused of causing suffering to an entire population,” Annan told the Security Council. “We are in danger of losing the argument or propaganda war--if we haven’t lost it already--about who is responsible for this situation, President Saddam Hussein or the United Nations.”

But Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham blamed the Iraqi regime for the hardship of the country’s 22 million people because of its failure to comply with U.N. resolutions “and its cynical manipulation of civilian suffering in an effort to obtain the lifting of sanctions without compliance.”

In Washington, the State Department released satellite photographs of a military complex that it said the Iraqi government built for an Iranian opposition group, wasting millions of dollars that could have been spent improving the welfare of the Iraqi people. But the Iranian group, the People’s Moujahedeen, denied the allegation.

At the U.N. session, France, China and Russia also delivered stinging attacks on the United States and Britain for conducting frequent airstrikes against Iraqi targets.