SUNS  4297 Thursday 8 October 1998


IRAQ: UN HUMANITARIAN OFFICIAL ASSAILS SANCTIONS POLICY

Washington, Oct 6 (IPS/Jim Lobe) -- The former UN chief of humanitarian programmes in Iraq charged Tuesday that the world body was violating its own Charter, and international human rights conventions, in enforcing economic sanctions against Iraq.

Denis Halliday, who resigned from the United Nations last week after a 34-year-long career, told an informal hearing in a Capitol office here that sanctions were a "bankrupt concept" that were "radicalising" an entire generation of Iraqis.

"I resigned to draw attention to the fact that the United Nations (is) not responding adequately to the situation in Iraq," he said. "I wanted to make a point."

"It is unnecessary and unacceptable that this human tragedy continue," said Halliday, who co-ordinated the programme that permitted Iraq to sell limited supplies of oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian sales.

His remarks came as Democratic Rep. John Conyers released a letter signed by 44 lawmakers - 10% of members of the House of Representatives - to President Bill Clinton calling on him to "re-think" the sanctions regime against Iraq, imposed in August 1990 after Baghdad invaded Kuwait.
During the war that followed much of Iraq's basic infrastructure, including most of its electrical grid and its water purification and sanitation systems, was destroyed by extensive bombing. It has not been repaired due in major part to the sanctions regime and the difficulty of importing spare parts.

This contributed to the dire humanitarian situation and "general breakdown in the fabric of (Iraqi) society," according to Peter Pellett, chair of the Nutrition Department at the University of Massachusetts who conducted two studies on Iraq for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in recent years.

     Up to six thousand Iraqi children died each month as a result of the sanctions, according to Halliday, who cited the most recent information from the World Health Organisation (WHO) which has been monitoring the situation.

The major direct causes for the high mortality include the poor health of mothers, the breakdown of health services, the high incidence of water-borne diseases, and the lack of power for the country's water system, he said.

"The victims are innocent civilians," he said. "There is a tragic incompatibility with the UN Charter, the conventions on human rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."

Despite the release of the Congressional letter, few observers believed there was a chance for changing the position of the United States. Washington can veto any move in the UN Security Council to lift or ease sanctions, if only because Clinton is being attacked here for not being
tough enough on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

On Monday night, for example, the House of Representatives voted 360-38 to authorise $97 million currently budgeted for the Defence Department to be used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and one or more dissident groups in Iraq to "remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein
from power...and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

The bill, if passed this week in the Senate, would be over the objections of the administration which argued that such an effort would threaten its efforts to hold together a multilateral coalition in the
Council to maintain sanctions. It noted that the CIA already had failed spectacularly in two previous attempts to organise an armed opposition against the Iraqi leader.

The bill was pushed through the House primarily because Clinton is perceived as having abandoned a tough line on weapons inspections.

Under Security Council resolutions, sweeping economic sanctions against Iraq are supposed to remain in place until UN inspection teams certify that Baghdad has eliminated all weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. The only exception is that Iraq is permitted to sell a limited amount of oil to buy food and medicine for its 22 million people.

Last February, Washington went along with a UN proposal to increase the amount of oil Baghdad could sell every six months from $2 billion worth to $5.2 billion. The increase was designed to mitigate the humanitarian impact of the embargo, a growing concern of other Security Council
members, while maintaining the weapons-inspection regime.

But Baghdad ceased cooperating with UN weapons inspectors last August. In contrast to past practice and pledges, Washington did not threaten military action. Instead, Clinton said he would stick to the economic sanctions in the interests of maintaining support for a containment
policy in the Security Council.

That decision has been widely criticised, particularly by Republicans who have used the testimony of Scott Ritter, a former top UN weapons inspector, who quit in August, claiming that the administration had sold out the inspections regime. The result has been a spate of editorials charging that Clinton has "appeased" the Iraqis.

"There's no way that Clinton is going to do anything that could promote that impression," according to one Congressional aide who favoured easing sanctions.

"What the US is doing now is showing that it is possible to separate economic from military sanctions," said Phyllis Bennis, a Mideast specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies here. "The problem is, it's doing it backwards. It is tightening the economic sanctions (while) abandoning the disarmament and monitoring."

Meanwhile, economic sanctions continued to reap their deadly toll, according to Halliday, who noted that, with the collapse of world oil prices combined with the devastated state of Baghdad's oil-producing infrastructure, Iraq cannot take adequate advantage of the increase in the 'oil-for-food' quota.

The social consequences for Iraq included a brain drain of some two to three million professionals, increased prostitution and sweat-shop factory conditions, child labour and begging. Halliday cited the risks of Iraq's long "isolation" from the Arab world and the West.

"Isolation will have a long-term impact," he said, noting that there is already a "move toward more radical movements in the younger generation."