WASHINGTON — After straining for months to keep broad international support for its confrontation with Iraq, the Bush Administration may have set itself on a nettlesome course of conflict at the United Nations with its surprise threat to maintain sanctions on Iraq so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.
The threat, delivered by Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates at a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. in Vancouver, Canada, on Tuesday, obviously surprised the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. It clearly strayed far beyond the intent of the cease-fire resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council in early April.
If carried out, the threat could provoke resentment and anger against the United States at the United Nations.
The problem was acknowledged to some extent by one U.S. official who looked on the policy as a major change of course. "The United States has been punctilious about staying within the resolution up to now," he said. "In general, it (the Gates threat) goes beyond the resolution."
President Bush has often said that he wants Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq. But this marked the first time that a senior Administration official has stated that any easing of sanctions depends on Hussein's ouster.
Gates, who is looked on as a leading candidate to replace the retiring William H. Webster as director of the CIA, said in his speech: "Saddam is discredited and cannot be redeemed. His leadership will never be accepted by the world community and, therefore, Iraqis will pay the price while he remains in power.
"All possible sanctions will be maintained until he is gone," Gates went on. "Any easing of sanctions will be considered only when there is a new government."
The Security Council resolution, which officially ended the Persian Gulf War on April 3, does not require Iraq to change its leadership to qualify for the lifting of sanctions. Instead, the resolution states that sanctions will end whenever the Security Council agrees that Iraq has complied with the demands that it destroy all its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and that it pay reparations for all the damages it caused during its occupation of Kuwait.
The five permanent members of the Security Council met Wednesday to discuss the level of Iraq's compensation for war damages, but a U.N. spokesman said it will take weeks before a decision is made.
