U.S. diplomat travels to push new policy on Iraq

From Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department's top Mideast diplomat will travel to Jordan, Syria and Turkey this weekend to discuss Iraq policy, a senior State Department official said.

The goal of Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward Walker's trip is to "shore up support from front-line states" whose cooperation will be crucial in tightening financial and military controls on Iraq, State Department officials tell CNN.

During his trip to the Middle East earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell heard from Iraq's neighbors that they could support tighter military and financial controls on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but only if the United States would ease up on its embargo of commercial goods.

Powell has said he plans to institute a new "smart sanctions" regime, which would allow more commercial goods into the country while making it more difficult for Hussein to use money from his oil sales to purchase dangerous weapons.

"We want to dramatically reduce the amount of prohibited goods," a State Department official said, "and only ban the lynch pin goods" needed for building weapons of mass destruction.

The official pointed to water pumps as an example of something that might be allowed under the new policy.

"Is that the lynch pin item the Iraqis will need to build weapons of mass destruction," the official asked. "Is that the make-or-break item?"

The official said rhetorically, "You can't ban pencils (just) because Iraqis use them to write down their ideas."

According to one official, the State Department was instructed to look at the list of goods banned by the U.N. sanctions committee and "cut the number in half immediately before even talking about the tough cuts."

"We have made a lot of progress of cutting down the list and now we are going to show that to the front-line countries," another official said. "We are going to tell them that we listened to them. This is no longer a sanctions regime, but a campaign on military items and blocking inputs into weapons of mass destruction. And now that we did this, they have to tell us they are going to live with it."

The official added, "We want to know what they are going to do."

He said Walker will talk with Jordan and Turkey the importance of having well-trained monitors at the borders and would urge Syria to stop importing oil through a pipeline between Syria and Iraq.

Officials caution that Walker's trip is step in the process, and that it would be some time before the United States is ready to roll out the revised Iraq policy. But one official said that the Bush administration wants to have the policy in place by June 5, which is when the next phase of the U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq is to come under review.

"It is not finalized yet," said one official. "But there is enough to go on to say that we have made a good faith effort and now we need a game plan for what the front lines are going to do."

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United Nations
Office of the Iraq Programme
The Iraqi Presidency
Iraqi National Congress
Iraq energy profile, U.S. Dept. of Energy

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