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April 27, 1998

[EXCERPTS] PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY

                           THE WHITE HOUSE
                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                            April 27, 1998     
                         PRESS BRIEFING BY 
                           MIKE MCCURRY      
                         The Briefing Room   
2:50 P.M. EDT
	     
	     Q	  Not a lot of interest today.
	     MR. MCCURRY:  Well, that's good.  All right, we'll 
dispense with this in short order then.  Anybody got anything for 
today?  
..................
	     Q	  With Richard Butler releasing his report on Iraq's 
compliance with the weapons inspections, is the administration 
prepared to take some steps to ease the sanctions against Iraq?
	     MR. MCCURRY:  Well, we have been very skeptical about 
sanctions relief lacking the full compliance that we expect from the 
government of Iraq, growing out to the post-Gulf War-U.N. Security 
Council resolutions.  There's one narrow area involving nuclear 
weapons programs that have been reviewed carefully by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency; we're recommending that the IAEA 
continue to work carefully to determine whether there's been full 
compliance.  And part of that, as you know, involves the availability 
of facilities for inspections at the request of both the IAEA and the 
U.N. Special Commission when it involves other weapons of mass 
destruction programs.  But aside from that one narrow area, we think 
that the conditions that would be necessary for broad-based sanctions 
relief don't present themselves because Saddam Hussein has not fully 
complied with the requirements the international community placed on 
him.
	     Q	  -- sanctions relief then?
	     MR. MCCURRY:  We have been very skeptical and dubious 
about the case for sanctions relief.
	     Q	  So, in other words, they have to comply on 
everything before there's any easing of sanctions, or can there be 
some piecemeal compliance and piecemeal easing of the sanctions?
	     Q	  I identified one narrow area, where there's been 
discussion about adjusting the file in one of the four areas, and 
that's nuclear weapons program, but nothing sufficient to make a case 
for overall sanctions relief.
........
             END                          3:20 P.M. EDT
	                                                      
#493-04/27