|
September 24,
2000
Saddam sells UN drugs on black market By Christina Lamb CHILDREN'S medicines sent to Iraq by a British pharmaceutical company under a United Nations programme are being smuggled out of the country and sold on the black market in Lebanon to fund the lavish tastes of Saddam Hussein. Glaxo-Wellcome has made official complaints to the Foreign Office and to the UN which oversees the Oil for Food Programme. This allows Baghdad to sell limited quantities of oil to buy vital humanitarian supplies for children, the sick and elderly. The UN Security Council set strict controls to ensure that the medicines went to civilians and not the regime. But a spokesman for Glaxo-Wellcome told The Telegraph that the company has so far traced 15,000 units of Ventolin, part of a consignment of asthma medicine shipped to Iraq, circulating on the black market in Beirut. The medicines had been transported to Lebanon using vehicles belonging to Iraq's ministry of transport. This indicates that the smuggling is being masterminded at the highest levels and undermines Saddam's claims that people are dying in Iraq because of shortages caused by the trade embargo imposed in 1991 after the invasion of Kuwait. However, with the Iraqi dictator still firmly in power despite a decade of sanctions, Britain and America are increasingly isolated as they continue to insist on the embargo. A Foreign Office official acknowledged: "Sanctions are clearly not working but they are desperately clinging on because no one knows what else to do." Saddam is using the supposed shortages as a propaganda tool, showing pictures of sick children and blaming the West for his people's suffering when his regime is actually smuggling out medicines that it does receive. The Ventolin is thought to be just a fraction of the UN- approved Western medicines illegally sold on by Saddam's lieutenants in a scheme run by his son Uday. The Iraqi opposition estimate that millions of pounds are being raised in this way and used to finance Saddam's regime and the activities of his intelligence services as they step up their work in London and other European capitals. Glaxo-Wellcome has launched a campaign to warn pharmacists in Lebanon and other Arab states not to sell the smuggled goods. The company is concerned about the safety implications of prescription drugs being sold over the counter as well as being undercut in markets to which it already exports. Last week the Lebanese authorities arrested a number of those involved in selling them. "Obviously this is a worrying development," said an official at the UN programme office for Iraq. A recent report by the office to the Security Council projected oil revenues for Iraq from December 1999 to June 2000 at �6 billion, which should be spent on health and food, and complained that medicines worth �180 million were still lying in Iraqi warehouses and had not been distributed. However, there is now increasing pressure to end sanctions both in the Arab world and beyond. Iraqi trade with Syria, Egypt and some Gulf countries has been increasing, as has support for an end to the embargo, and there have been several reports of oil being smuggled through Turkey and the UAE. Last week Saddam's regime celebrated the arrival of a Russian flight at the newly-reopened Baghdad international airport and Aeroflot executives are awaiting Kremlin approval for the resumption of what will be the first regular commercial flights since the Gulf war. Passengers on last week's flight included oil executives interested in making deals with Iraq. On Friday, a French plane flew from Paris to Baghdad, carrying doctors, athletes and artists defying a request from the UN committee that upholds the sanctions regime against Iraq. The sanctions committee was informed only on Thursday night of the Friday morning flight and France refused a request to delay the flight for 12 hours so that the issue could be studied. Welcoming the flight at Baghdad, Hussein Saeed, an Iraqi Olympic committee official, said the French had taken "a big initiative in breaking the embargo". At the same time, boosted by record oil prices and the protests in Britain and across Europe over high fuel costs, Saddam has begun an intensive lobbying campaign to weaken the sanction regime. His efforts already seem to be having some effect. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's new president, recently made a trip to Baghdad, the first elected head of state to visit since the Gulf war. Known for his anti-American rhetoric, President Chavez claimed his visit was necessary because Venezuela currently holds the presidency of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and suggested it was time to end Iraq's isolation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac3511677918707&rtmo=xA8YxM&a tmo=tttttd&pg=t/00/9/24/wdrug24.html |
