By Jane Morse
Washington File staff writer

Washington -- United Nations economic sanctions against Iraq are no longer necessary, says State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher.

"One has to accept the fact that with the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, the need for economic sanctions goes away," Boucher told reporters at the April 17 daily briefing at the State Department. "It should be fairly obvious to everybody that we're not in the same situation that we were a month or two ago, or several years ago when other resolutions were passed."

Currently, U.N. Security Council resolutions are "comprehensive and restrict most imports and exports, or at least require a certain amount of control," the spokesman said. "In the end, in the future of Iraq -- a future that's starting already -- some restriction on trade in weapons would probably be necessary.

"But the need for broad economic sanctions goes away," he said. "The Iraqi people will be increasingly capable of taking care of their own affairs in that regard."

According to Boucher, "sanctions that prohibit countries from buying or selling goods to Iraq other than through the oil-for-food program will not be needed." The oil-for-food program, he said, "is important because it's part of, first, safeguarding their own natural resource base, but also it's part of the food distribution system." Some 60 percent of Iraqis are estimated to be dependent on the oil-for-food program.

The United States, Boucher said, will be working with the Security Council "to ensure that the economic sanctions that were imposed because of the behavior of the Saddam Hussein regime are lifted so that Iraq can resume a normal trading relationship with the global economy ... so that the aspirations and needs of the Iraqi people can be met."

When pressed on whether a declaration that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction is necessary for sanctions to be lifted, Boucher said: "I'm saying we'll be discussing this with other members of the Security Council, and the Security Council will decide in a new resolution what it wants to do in this regard."

He emphasized that any new U.N. resolution "will be the new resolution for a new circumstance, and not necessarily just a repeat of old resolutions."

As for U.N. inspectors, the spokesman said: "We have not, at this point, defined what the future role of U.N. inspectors might be. Clearly, the circumstances have changed, but there is still dangerous activity in Iraq. The coalition forces continue their mission, which is to identify and secure weapons of mass destruction. That remains a job for the coalition forces. But once they've accomplished that job, and we move to further stages along the way, I suppose we'll see what role other inspectors might have."

Regarding the establishment of civil order in Iraq, Boucher said efforts by coalition forces as well as Iraqis are starting to show "visible effects."

"There are Iraqis who are trying to calm down the situation in various cities," he said, "and coalition forces are taking more active effort on the ground to calm things down and stop the looting; they've been successful in many areas already."

Baghdad has a new police chief in place and there are joint patrols with coalition forces in Baghdad as well as other cities, Boucher noted.

Getting all of Iraq's police officers back on the job is the immediate goal, he said, followed by the creation and training of a "peace force that can be responsible for the security of Iraqi citizens."

To this end, police instructors are being gathered under the authority of Jay Garner, the director of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA).

"We're now in the limited competition to identify, deploy and support an additional 1,000 police advisers," Boucher said.