11.   The secretary general said that he conveyed to the Security Council the concern expressed by Saddam about the suffering that sanctions have caused the Iraqi people.

12.   The sanctions ARE causing grave hardship in Iraq.

13.   The trade minister, Mohammed Mehdi Saleh, said Iraq had nothing to fear from attacks, since the sanctions were already causing suffering.

14.   Whatever pain sanctions caused ordinary Iraqis, there were sound technical reasons, as well as political ones, for keeping them going.

15.   Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said Saturday that he does not believe the sanctions will cause overall U.S.-Armenian relations to deteriorate.

16.   Aziz also met Monday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who expressed sympathy for the Iraqi people because of the hardships caused by sanctions, Xinhua said.

17.   Aziz said U.N. sanctions have caused shortages of food and medicine that have resulted in unprecedented deaths in Iraq.

18.   But U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said Washington wants an agreement to deflect criticism that the sanctions are causing too much suffering among Iraqi civilians.

19.   But the program is popular among many governments, which believe the sanctions cause most of the suffering among ordinary Iraqis rather than the Baghdad leadership.

20.   Critics claim sanctions invariably cause more suffering among ordinary people than among the leaders whose policies led to the punitive controls.