The two new sanctions announced yesterday - banning commercial airline flights and large private financial transactions - are modest in themselves.

These losses incline merchants to be cautious and often they ban legitimate transactions and lose potential revenues.

Russian law bans transactions in any foreign currency, but prices for all manner of goods - from apartments to cars - are routinely discussed and advertised in dollars.

Administration officials said today that President Clinton would announce unilateral action within a few days to ban flights and financial transactions between Haiti and the United States.

Tightening a trade embargo, the Clinton Administration announced last week that it would ban all commercial flights and most financial transactions between the United States and Haiti.

The department is also asking Congress for broad new powers to combat money laundering, including the authority to ban financial transactions between United States banks or brokerage houses and offshore financial centers.

However, religious scholars are apt to read into old texts the validity to ban many modern acts and transactions not contemplated by the revealed law.

By this time, Cuba had already banned commercial transactions in dollars, as a response to a tightening of US sanctions.

But the resolutions banning all trade and financial transactions with Iraq do not specifically prohibit Iraq from flying planes abroad.

The I.R.S., which banned Son-of-Boss-style transactions in 2000, persuaded more than 1,200 people to come forward last year and pay $3.7 billion in taxes owed.