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Thanks for the updates Gabriel - and congratulations on your recent letter to the editor. You are concerned that "the spin is certainly working". There are some reasons to hope that it may not end up this way. First, some of the more sobre news outlets are much less impressed. The Financial Times' article used the proposals as an opportunity to outline Iraq's more pressing civilian needs, clearly indicating that the proposals failed to meet them. Evelyn Leopold's (Reuters) line about the new proposals allowing everything from "bicycles to sewing machines" into Iraq more easily has stuck with me: this makes it clear what a joke this is. I think that at least one serious weekly news magazine may be running similarly critical commentary next week. Second, no one that I've spoken to (UN Iraq people, and diplomats from two countries, including one officially selling the proposals) thinks that the proposals are either feasible (e.g. bringing the front line states on board) or likely to offer much humanitarian improvement. Last, but perhaps most importantly: there is a large community of people who are both informed and concerned. We're responding quickly and intelligently. These cracks do not bode well for these proposals. Furthermore, their infeasibility means that the US could take a real soaking on them. Let's keep up the pressure! Colin Rowat |work| 269 Mercer Street, Room 710 | Department of Economics | New York University | New York, NY 10003, USA | (212) 998 8939 | http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cir2 | cir2@nyu.edu |home| 274 Vanderbilt Ave., #2 | Brooklyn NY 11205, USA | colinrowat@yahoo.com |tel/fax| (917) 517 5840 (mobile) | (707) 221 3672 (fax) | 9175175840@voicestream.net (SMS) _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://www.casi.org.uk