Continuing sanctions against Iraq could be the major international issue of the coming year

There was an air of wishful thinking about reports this week that the Iraqi dictator, Mr Saddam Hussein, had suffered a stroke.

On New Year's Eve he was reviewing a military march-past reminiscent of the old Soviet era, when Baghdad television screens reportedly went blank. As with the old Kremlinologists, Saddam-watchers immediately began speculating that something was wrong.

The sparse Iraqi opposition in exile was divided over the accuracy of the story. Meanwhile, Iraqi government spokesmen dismissed it as "nonsensical".

Footage of their leader chairing a cabinet meeting was shown on television, but there was no independent confirmation of the date and time. Old hands recalled that look-alikes of Saddam are said to be used as decoys for security purposes.

"Nothing trivial, I hope," Winston Churchill is supposed to have said when told that a political opponent was feeling under the weather. The coincidence between the return of leading Gulf warriors to power in the United States and reports that Mr Saddam was fatally ill or even dead was suspicious, to say the least. It sounded like somebody, somewhere, had decreed: "Let's give that SOB something to deny."

The latest rumour came within months of a report that Saddam had been stricken with cancer. It was more believable, however, to be told that the regime had executed two generals, probably for disloyalty.

Given the closed nature of society in Iraq and the multiplicity of hostile forces ranged against it abroad, reports from inside and outside the country should be treated with caution. But it is beyond doubt that loyalty is taken seriously in Mr Saddam's Iraq. Verbal insults to the head of state are not a life-enhancing move.

Isaac Deutscher's biography of Stalin is said to be one of the leader's favourite books. Like the Soviet dictator, he has a reputation for extraordinary ruthlessness and has allowed a cult of personality to develop around him over the years.

Stalin was known to enjoy a cowboy movie even after signing a fresh slew of death warrants, and the obituaries of the recently deceased pianist and comedian Victor Borge featured the revelation that Mr Saddam was one of his greatest fans.

The parallels break down when it comes to lifestyle. Stalin had modest tastes and was content with frugal comfort. Mr Saddam's penchant for building palaces all over the country is well known. This may indeed stem from a type of "edifice complex" but there are suggestions that they may be part of another, more sinister, agenda.

In the autumn of 1997, UN weapons inspectors were refused entry to "presidential sites" on the basis that to do so would impugn "national dignity and sovereignty".

The chief UN inspector at the time, Richard Butler, later claimed that Saddam's residences "were also the sites from which his programme for weapons of mass destruction was designed and operated and where the physical components of the programme were probably stored as well".

The Iraqi regime has a particular passion for weapons of mass destruction. In 1991, courtesy of Kurdish guerrillas, I entered Iraq from the Iranian side and spent an afternoon in Halabja, the former Kurdish town where some 5,000 people died in a gas attack by Iraqi forces in March 1988.

Afterwards, Iraqi troops demolished most of the houses so that the place would never be habitable again. I still have a haunting memory of cars halted in a variety of awkward locations, rusting mementoes of the moment the poisonous fumes overcame their unfortunate occupants.

I have never met Mr Saddam but have encountered the consequences of his actions in a variety of places, including on the Turkish and Iranian borders with Iraq where Kurdish refugees, fleeing Mr Saddam's vengeance, lived and died in appalling squalor. I have also visited an Iranian graveyard and seen families weeping for young men half my age who died in the eight-year war with Iraq.

During the Clinton years, Iraq became a secondary news item. But now, with the younger Bush at the helm, Mr Saddam's fate is again a matter of pressing international interest.

The new US Secretary of State, Gen Colin Powell, was a key figure in the Gulf War and has more recently spoken of the need to "re-energise" the sanctions against Iraq. Vice-President Dick Cheney was defence secretary during the Gulf conflict and no doubt he, too, sees the overthrow of Mr Saddam as an item of unfinished business.

The Iraqi demagogue has seen off four US presidents and is now on his second Bush, so to speak. Before the Gulf War peaceable elements of world opinion suggested economic sanctions were a better way to deal with Mr Saddam than force.

Operation Desert Storm went ahead and, although Mr Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was reversed, such was the cost in the lives of young Iraqi soldiers that it apparently persuaded the Allies that it was not worth going all the way to Baghdad.

Now moderate opinion has begun to turn against the sanctions. While no reliable figures are available, it is clear that a huge price is being paid by the ordinary people of Iraq, especially the children, for the sanctions policy.

Such is the suffering and pain that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, felt obliged to raise the issue with the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, when they visited Washington DC last March.

Since New Year's Day Ireland has been a member of the UN Security Council, the body which imposed, and continues to implement, the sanctions.

Efforts have been made to alleviate the worst effects, but still the misery continues, and Irish politicians such as Albert Reynolds, Michael D. Higgins, David and Niall Andrews, Jim O'Keeffe and John Gormley have spoken out on the issue.

A condition colloquially known as "sanctions fatigue" has set in internationally. The Irish Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Denis Halliday, has been campaigning actively for the sanctions to end, and his arguments are receiving a wider and more willing hearing each week.

Apart from the not-unrelated Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the continuation of the sanctions could be the major international issue of the coming year.

As a good and loyal UN member-state, Ireland will always adhere to decisions by the Security Council, but there is increasing discomfort on the issue at governmental level.

In discussions at the Security Council, the Irish delegation will promote the need to take greater cognisance of the suffering of Iraqi civilians and the importance of measures to mitigate the worst effects of UN policy.

There have been suggestions from some quarters that a tighter and more focused series of measures could be devised: we have had "smart bombs" so why not "smart sanctions"? The wider question of whether civilian populations should be made to pay for the misdeeds of their unelected leaders is also increasingly gaining attention.

Barring ill-health or an assassin's bullet, there seems little reason at this stage to believe that Mr Saddam cannot outlast yet another White House incumbent.

The wider world has spent billions in an unsuccessful effort to encompass his downfall and is now having qualms of conscience about the whole endeavour. Once again it looks like Mr Saddam is about to have the last laugh.