The Bush administration this week will renew a 1995 ban on US trade with and investment in Iran, US officials were quoted as saying by USA Today on Monday.
They say the step is being taken despite the administration's dislike of unilateral economic sanctions. The White House has been preoccupied with trying to shore up United Nations sanctions against Iraq and has not had a chance to review Iran policy. The administration has to extend the ban by Thursday or see it expire, the officials say.
The news came parallel to a landmark visit Monday by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to Moscow, with which Iran has agreed on military and economic cooperation, ignoring US protests.
US oil companies will continue to be banned from investing in Iranian energy production under the sanctions. At the same time, the administration, like its predecessor, is not enforcing a 1996 law intended to discourage other countries from investing in Iran and Libya, said USA Today.
However, those against the embargo are optimistic that the US grip is loosing on the oil-rich Gulf state.
"I'm very upbeat about US-Iran relations," Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor who heads the American-Iranian Council told the paper.
A year ago, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed the group to announce an easing of US sanctions to permit Americans to buy Iranian caviar, pistachio nuts and carpets. In 1999, President Clinton gave permission for US exports of agricultural and medical products to Iran.
The daily said that the Bush administration is waiting for the upcoming presidential elections and is taking its time formulating a new approach toward Iran, a country that has been largely hostile toward the United States since a revolution in 1979. But Washington must decide soon whether it will support renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The 1996 law, which expires in August, sought to bar foreign companies from investing more than $20 million a year in the energy sectors of Iran and Libya. Amid an uproar from European countries, it has never been enforced.
"It's a white elephant," says Geoffrey Kemp, an expert at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank that focuses on international relations. "It's more trouble than it's worth, particularly when we need European cooperation on a whole array of more important issues," such as missile defense.
Arab, African and other states have stood behind Libya in its demand for full lifting of the sanctions imposed on it on grounds of the Lockerbie case, when Tripoli refused to hand over two suspects accused of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight, killing 270 passengers and locals of the Scottish town.
When Libya succumbed to the pressure, the UN embargo was partially removed in 1998. In February, one of the suspects received a life sentence while the other was acquitted – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
