[JURIST] Documents released [linked list] by a US congressional panel Tuesday show that the UN Security Council was aware that Saddam Hussein was violating UN sanctions, but was so split that many breaches went unchecked. Among the breaches were maintaining diplomatic ties to other nations, encouraging other nations to start commercial flights to Baghdad, reopening an oil pipeline between Iraq and Syria and illegally imposing oil surcharges. In a statement to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations panel [official website] yesterday, Thomas Schweich, chief of staff at the US mission to the United Nations, described the UN sanctions committee [testimony transcript] as "increasingly contentious" and said US and British efforts to curb Hussein's abuses were often "negated by other members' desires to ease sanctions on Iraq." Reuters has more.