Leading article: These Iraq talks are achieving nothing

THE REGULAR meetings between the United Nations weapons inspector, Richard Butler, and the Iraqi ministers have become an endless litany of polite hopes and practical hopelessness. Each time, Butler comes out saying that the inspectorate is close to completing its work and sanctions should soon be lifted. To which Tariq Aziz, the smooth-talking deputy leader, replies that sanctions are no longer justified, that Iraq has fully complied with the resolutions and that maintaining punitive measures is simply a plot by the Americans to keep Iraq on its knees.

There is more truth to this than America's allies, Britain in particular, may care to admit. The ritual in Baghdad is being played out at the expense of Iraq's ordinary citizens, as many as 2 million of whom have been brought to the edge of starvation by sanctions. America does want to bring Saddam Hussein down. His continued presence in the Middle East makes a mockery of its victory in the Gulf war and is increasingly embarrassing to its relations with the Arab world. The Arab Middle East is tired of a conflict that has all the appearances of a West-versus-East act of bullying and has made Saddam Hussein, one of its history's most vicious tyrants, appear as a victim.

For the more cynical, there is also a case for arguing that America, at this stage, does not want the complete collapse in oil prices that unrestrained increases in Iraqi exports would bring. It would damage terribly both American (and North Sea) oil producers at home, and Saudi Arabia and the other pro-Western regimes in the Gulf. The problem for America is that it does not know what to do. It can't seem to bring Saddam Hussein down, and yet it is loth to let him off the hook. Pressed by Congress, President Clinton has come up with a plan that spends $5m on promoting a "Free Iraq" Radio and another $5m on bolstering the exiled opposition. No one seriously believes that either will have much effect on a dictatorship that has used every outside pressure to increase its own power

Thus sanctions have become a gesture not of intent or of value - they may even make Hussein's hold over his country stronger, not weaker - but of lack of alternative. They should not be. If the object is really to topple the regime and reintroduce Iraq into the Middle Eastern fold, then there is a lot to be said for relieving sanctions and promoting the free trade of goods and ideas. these have had far more success in bringing down Communism than ever force has. Why not in the Middle East too? The time has come for a new strategy to cope with the Butcher of Baghdad.