Against that grim backdrop, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a major change in policy Tuesday. The Bush administration, he said, will ease general economic and trade sanctions against Iraq and institute more targeted, or "smart," sanctions -- ones designed to hurt Saddam directly rather than placing the burden on civilians.

"The message I've consistently heard," Powell told the press Tuesday during a visit to European leaders in Belgium, "is that overdoing it with the sanctions gives [Saddam] a tool that he is using against us -- and really is not weakening him." During his first trip to the Middle East as secretary of state last weekend, Powell sought support for sanctions from leaders of the allied Arab states. The consensus he found among them was that America must change its approach, or continue to lose their support.

Powell's proposed sanctions would allow basic civilian goods into Iraq, along with "dual-use" items, such as water pumps, that might be of interest to the military but are also necessities of everyday life.

Both the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council leveled the trade sanctions against Iraq more than 10 years ago following the Gulf War. The goal was both to weaken Saddam and to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. But instead, the sanctions have only bolstered Saddam's power inside Iraq.

The sanctions also created an unrealistic barrier to trade within the Persian Gulf region -- one that has steadily crumbled as neighboring countries open up trade with Iraq despite American objections. Even Iraq's nemesis Syria opened a major oil pipeline between the two countries in defiance of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, allowing Saddam to export hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day. But the Syrians still want Saddam out, and have promised Powell to institute a U.N. escrow account that will take Iraq's proceeds from that pipeline out of Saddam's pocket. Such moves, targeted directly at the Iraqi dictator, have many longtime critics of sanctions feeling optimistic.

"Really, it's hard to imagine how these sanctions have lasted as long as they have," says James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, a nongovernmental organization that monitors U.N. policy. The group, which has close contact with the U.N. Security Council, has long called for targeted rather than general trade sanctions, both for humanitarian and strategic reasons. "The problem is, the general trade sanctions hurt everyone but the leadership," Paul says.

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