March 13, 1999, Saturday

 SECTION: Pg. 11

 LENGTH: 898 words

 HEADLINE: WARM WELCOME STILL IN CITY UNDER SIEGE

 BYLINE: Christine Aziz In Baghdad

 BODY:
 BAGHDAD is always a welcome sight after driving from Amman through flat desert scrub for 12 hours.

 Within minutes of driving into the city, the changes are noticeable after an 18-month absence. The Iraqis love fountains
 and there are plenty dotted around the city - these days they are being spruced up by armies of workers, and flowers are
 being planted in parks and roundabouts.

 Thin, ragged children reach into our car and beg. Our Iraqi driver, ashamed, apologises for them. I had not seen children
 begging like this before in Baghdad - but this is the first generation to be growing up under sanctions.

 It's a shock to see the bright bursts of colour from the fruit being sold in the streets and even more of a surprise to be told
 proudly by Iraqi friends that they are home grown.

 Before the Gulf war and sanctions, Iraq imported 90 per cent of its food, and the remaining 10 per cent was produced by
 agricultural labourers from Egypt, who left when war broke out.

 But as with anything in Iraq that appears to be good news, the apparent abundance of home-grown vegetables and fruit
 in the markets hides a miserable truth; Iraq is struggling to feed itself. In the central and southern regions some 300,000
 hectares of previously reclaimed cultivated land have been abandoned owing to rising salinity, lack of water, farm
 machinery and fertilisers.

 Before leaving for Iraq I had been warned that since December's bombing of Baghdad by Britain and the United States,
 the Iraqis were no longer as friendly and tolerant of British visitors as they used to be. I prepared myself for sullen, hostile
 looks. But the welcome at my usual hotel, the Swan Lake, is overwhelming and shaming.

 Edmond walks out from the kitchen, still wearing the same squeaky shoes and threadbare suit. "Welcome, welcome," he
 says and rushes to prepare us coffee. He once worked at the British Council and like many Iraqis has a deep love of the
 English language. Older Iraqis still bemoan the loss of the British Council library.

 "Why didn't you bring me any newspapers?" Samir grumbles at the Ministry of Information.

 He was our "minder" on our last visit and although unlike other Iraqis he has access to international news stations at the
 ministry, he is hungry for anything written in English. People still stop me to ask "How much is a pint of beer in Britain
 these days?"

 Later in the evening we sit in the dark, while the hotel owner tries to start up the generator.

 Power is rationed to three hours a day and everyone is dreading a summer without air conditioning. "The government is
 giving the electricity to Basra to keep the people sweet there," grumbles one resident. Another says a local power plant
 was destroyed in the bombing.

 In Iraq there is always more than one version of a story. Until the Gulf war, Britain was a first choice for further education
 for Iraqis, and what is humbling for Britons visiting Iraq these days is the ability of Baghdad residents to separate the
 government from the people. "It's not you who is bombing us," they say to me. "It is that American puppet of yours, Blair."

 When Christian friends take me out to dinner they tell me how they climbed on to the roof of their home to watch the
 bombs fall as if describing a firework display. This story is not recounted out of sheer bravado, but to make me feel less
 guilty. They were not frightened, they say. "We are so used to it. We are fine," they say laughing, and then fall silent.

 I invite Bayda to dinner at the hotel but she refuses to eat, preferring to maintain her diet of coffee and cigarettes.

 Bayda, 35, works for the General Federation of Iraqi Women and her mother is to have an operation to remove gallstones.

 I am curious to know how the family will pay for it. When I last visited Bayda, only one room in the house remained
 furnished, the rest had been sold off to pay for food and medicines. Surely they hadn't sold what little was left? Bayda
 says relatives in Jordan have helped.

 When I first met Bayda, it was seven years after the introduction of sanctions, and her monthly salary had dropped from $
 450 to $ 5 - the cost of two dozen eggs and a kilo of rice.

 But today the dollar is worth around 1,800 Iraqi dinar. In l989 it was worth three dinar.

 There are plenty of new cars on central Baghdad's roads, shops are full of new electrical goods, the stalls that crowded
 the foyer of the plush Al Rashid hotel selling goods bought from families desperate to survive have gone, restaurants are
 busy. Such sights are misleading; in today's Iraq, the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.

 "The oil for food agreement has changed nothing. Things are getting worse, not better," Bayda sighs. "My doctor has
 diagnosed hypertension and I am on pills. When Baghdad was bombed I was terrified. We just sat in the house and
 prayed a bomb wouldn't hit us.

 "They want to destroy us.

 Part of me is too depressed to care but I can't sleep and all the time I am smoking, smoking. I can't see any end to this."

 It is hard leaving Iraq and when we finally clear the border, there's a sense of leaving a crowded prison whose inmates
 have no idea how long they are in for or why. Edmond fusses around us. When the sanctions are over, he asks, could we
 invite him to Britain? His dream is to see Buckingham Palace and the Queen.