United States Foreign Aid Iraq

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, seeking to quell growing public dismay over the Bush Administration's failure to aid Kurdish and Shiite Muslim rebels in Iraq, said Sunday that the United States kept its distance from the rebellions to avoid "being sucked into a civil war."

Top executives of an Iraqi-owned company that funneled military technology to Baghdad before the Persian Gulf War were given immunity by federal prosecutors investigating $5 billion in hidden Iraqi loans, according to documents.

Italy's Senate is considering a proposal to revive an investigation here into the role that government-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and various Italian companies played in an Iraqi arms buildup before the Persian Gulf War. A proposal awaiting approval by the full Senate would create a 20-senator commission to explore the $5 billion in loans made to Iraq by BNL's branch in Atlanta while Iraq was at war with Iran.

Reflecting on the early years of his Administration, President Bush said Thursday that he might "rethink our position" of providing large-scale American aid to Iraq, if withholding the assistance then might later have deterred Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from invading Kuwait. Bush's comments, in a question-and-answer session at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, were his most expansive public acknowledgment of new questions about U.S.

The Bush Administration on Thursday delivered the first formal defense of its policy of providing extensive aid to Iraq before the invasion of Kuwait, maintaining that it was the best option for dealing with a difficult Mideast situation. The detailed statement was provided to a congressional committee by Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, an Administration point man on the Mideast.

With the help of unscrupulous truck drivers, clandestine tramp steamers and compliant Iranian customs officials, Iraq has succeeded in selling between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil a day, despite a U.N. economic embargo, Clinton Administration officials said Thursday. But they said the sales are a tiny fraction of Iraq's volume of 2.5 million barrels a day before the Gulf War.

American military cargo planes Sunday began parachuting emergency food supplies to suffering Kurdish refugees caught in the rugged mountain frontier region between Iraq and Turkey. A U.S. military officer at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey said that eight C-130 cargo planes loaded with food made the first drop to the several hundred thousand isolated Kurds on both sides of the Iraqi-Turkish border. British, French and German aircraft are expected to join in the emergency airlift today.

The Bush Administration approved export licenses for computers and software that helped design Iraq's notorious supergun and a ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel and other Middle East countries, according to documents and congressional investigators. The export license for the computers was granted in the fall of 1989 to a Maryland company controlled by artillery wizard Gerald Bull, who was assassinated six months later outside his apartment in Belgium.

As the presidential race enters its final weeks, President Bush's role as chief architect of an ill-fated policy toward Iraq is emerging as a potential weak spot in one of his strongest selling points to voters, his reputation as a savvy manager of foreign affairs.

Flying back to Washington on Oct. 9 from Los Angeles, Atty. Gen. William P. Barr received word that the Justice Department and CIA were blaming each other for withholding crucial information from an Atlanta judge in a bank fraud case involving $5 billion in loans to Iraq.