Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists . In what would be a major policy change, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that the United States was seriously considering supporting the lifting of all non-military U.N. sanctions against Iraq. The U.N. sanctions program was designed to force Iraq to destroy its ability to develop and produce weapons of mass destruction.
Critics say the sanctions failed in their goal but caused the Iraqi people to suffer.
Following three days of talks with leaders in Saudi Arabia , Jordan and Syria , Powell said the United States was in the process of shaping new sanctions, which would target Iraq's military exclusively and not the Iraqi people. Powell said these ideas resonated throughout the region, where support for sanctions had greatly diminished. The Bush administration has as much as acknowledged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has won the propaganda war and succeeded in convincing the Arab world that the sanctions had caused the Iraqi people to suffer. Although Powell has attempted to convince people otherwise, he has also shown a willingness to lift some of the non-military sanctions. Powell said a lot of the details still need to be worked out and ultimately it would be up to the United Nations sanction committee to decide what might be exported to Iraq .