THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 29, 1995 TAG: 9503290001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
One of the last places where an American would want to stray, and where the United States would want to have to rescue him, is Iraq. Not only did the United States best Iraq at war. It still has troops there enforcing terms of the cease-fire. It also keeps the pressure on the international community to see that the Iraqis destroy their non-conventional weapons and, until they comply, to sustain U.N. economic sanctions which bite harder by the day.
Potential hostages would complicate these already strained relations. So anywhere near Iraq is a prime place where the State Department, other federal agencies and U.S. businesses should be exceptionally security-conscious.
Yet two Americans doing business in Kuwait, David Daliberti and William Bar-loon, set out to visit a friend in the U.N. force that monitors the border between Kuwait and Iraq, and end-ed up sentenced to eight years in an Iraqi prison for illegal entry.
They lost their way, Washington says, through ``innocent mistakes.'' Getting lost in this region is not hard: Remember at the start of the Persian Gulf war a television crew set out on its own and drove directly into Iraqi hands. But since the cease-fire, checkpoints exist to prevent such innocent mistakes. Why, the State Department should be asking, did they fail?
Washington, meantime, must persuade Baghdad that Iraq won't gain U.S. or U.N. concessions by linking the Americans' release to the lifting of sanctions. Lebanon taught the United States, the hard way, that making deals for hostages usually makes more hostages. By its previous treatment of commission members, Iraq itself has taught the U.N. disarmament commission, which must soon update its report on Iraqi com-pli-ance, to be wary of deals with Baghdad.
At the same time, Washington can let Baghdad know what Iraq could lose by holding the men: The offer already on the table to loosen the sanctions a bit for humanitarian supplies goes on hold until the two are free. by CNB