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----- Original Message -----
From: Rania Masri
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 8:09 PM
Subject: [iac-disc.] FW: Sponeck: Iraq must be freed of economic sanctions, kills
people
Monday, November 26, 2001
News
Sponeck: Iraq must be freed of economic sanctions, kills people
Former UN assistant secretary general Hans-C. Graf Sponeck says Iraqis
shouldn't be paying price
after 11 years
by F. Abbas Rana
The Hill Times
Hans-C. Graf Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United
Nations Organization and United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, says enough
is enough: the U.S.-led UN economic sanctions against Iraq must be lifted though
military sanctions should remain in place.
"The suffering of Iraqi people outweighs the political objectives that you
want to achieve by imposing sanctions," said Mr. Sponeck in an interview last week
with The Hill Times.
Mr. Sponeck, who was in Canada recently to participate in conferences
organized by the Canadian Network to End Sanctions on Iraq (CANESI), was interviewed
by The Hill Times in Ottawa. He worked for the United Nations for over 30 years but
quit last year in protest, arguing that the policy of economic sanctions against Iraq
is a failure.
As a UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, he was primarily responsible
for the Oil for Food Program which is a "six-monthly renewable effort to help the
Iraqi people to survive by supplying them with what they need physically in exchange
for Iraqi oil. This program is entirely financed by Iraqi oil revenue."
As a retired former UN assistant secretary general, Mr. Sponeck lives in
Geneva, Switzerland and follows invitations to speak, write and make documentaries
about the situation in Iraq. Recently, he made a documentary with a Swiss television
network about Iraq. The title of the documentary is Why. This documentary is finished
but it has not yet been released.
"It is all about why Iraqis have to pay a price? Why are they punished for
something that they have not done?"
Mr. Sponeck paints a very grim picture of today's Iraq, a country
suffering after 11 years of U.S.-led UN economic sanctions. These sanctions were
imposed on Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Said Mr. Sponeck: "After 11 years of sanctions, everything related to the
quality of life has become much worse directly as a result of sanctions as is
reflected in UN documents. According to a UNICEF report, there has been a 160 per cent
increase in the children-under-five mortality between 1990 and the year 2000 because
of poor polluted water, malnourishment and lack of medicines and this is directly
related to the sanctions. "
According to CANESI, an estimated 1.3 million Iraqis have died since 1991
from hunger and disease directly resulting from sanctions. The sanctions are supported
by the U.K. and Canada.
Mr. Sponeck is critical of the Oil for Food Program for its inadequacy to
help the common Iraqi people. Only $119.70 is given to one person for a year.
"There is too little money for the needs of the Iraqi people. One hundred
and nineteen dollars and seventy cents. That is nothing," said Mr. Sponeck. "That
covers everything from electricity to agriculture, water, sanitation, food and
medicine. How can that be? I read yesterday in the press here that the per capita
spending by Canada on the military is $265 per person per year. That was considered
very inadequate in the newspaper that I read. NATO average is $500, I read. Now for
Iraqis, their entire life is valued in terms of what they are getting, $119.70."
NDP MP Svend Robinson (Burnaby-Douglas, B.C.), his party's foreign affairs
critic, said he agreed with Mr. Sponeck's conclusion about the U.S.-led sanctions
against Iraq and considers Mr. Sponeck a courageous person.
"Absolutely, I fully support Hans Sponeck. Both Mr. Sponeck and Dennis
Halliday, his predecessor, have been very clear on this issue. The economic sanctions
are inhumane. There have been over half a million children die as innocent victims.
Saddam Hussein has not been touched in any way by these sanctions and they should be
lifted immediately. I fully support his criticism of the existing program," said Mr.
Robinson.
But Liberal MP Bill Graham (Toronto Centre-Rosedale, Ont.), chairman of
the prestigious House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he didn't agree with Mr. Sponeck
about the inadequacy of the money generated by the Oil for Food Program.
"I am in favour of lifting sanctions that prevent food and medicines
getting through to the ordinary Iraqis. The problem as far as I understand, is that a
lot of money that's available to Mr. Saddam Hussein has not been spent by him. He is
deliberately not using this," said Mr. Graham. "He does not spend the money that he
does get. Canada sent $50-million for schools and they wouldn't even accept it. It has
got to be both ways. I am all in favour of lifting the sanctions and just having
sanctions on Mr. Saddam Hussein personally, his directors and people in charge of what
is going on in the country but we have to do it in a way which works and I am just
worried that they are not cooperating."
For his part, Mr. Sponeck criticized those who say that Saddam Hussein is
the one who attacked Kuwait and gassed people.
"If you want to be fair and you want to take everything into
consideration, you also have to remember that in 1988 when this terrible incident of
gassing people in Halabja happened in the North, the western world was largely quiet,"
he said. "We did not do anything because Saddam Hussein was our man in the war against
Iran and we should not come now from a moral high ground and now if we want to
criticize Iraq we should also include ourselves in that criticism."
Mr. Sponeck said he agrees with those who say that Saddam Hussein and his
cronies are not affected by the sanctions. It is only the common Iraqi people who are
suffering because of the U.S.-led economic sanctions but he also said he thinks that
"Saddam Hussein and his government may have done and has done a lot of evil things but
they cannot now be blamed at home for not doing more for the Iraqi people even though
that is exactly what we are hearing from the U.S. State Department."
Mr. Sponeck flatly rejected the suggestion made in some news stories
recently in the U.S. and Canadian media that Iraq is involved in some way in the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
"People want to establish that. Clearly there are groups like James
Woolsey, Richard Pearl, Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld to a lesser extent and Dr. Laurie
Mylorie who has written this book Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against United
States. All of them are trying to make the public believe that there is not only a
connection with the 11th of September but with the 1993 bombing, bombings in Nairobi
[Kenya] and Dar es Salam [Tanzania], [the U.S.S.] Cole, even with the Oklahoma bombing
and anthrax attacks. Read for evidence and you won't find that."
Mr. Robinson and Mr. Graham also agree with Mr. Sponeck that there is no
evidence that Iraq is involved in Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"There has not been the slightest evidence presented to link Iraq with the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," said Mr. Robinson. "There are certainly talks within the
U.S. administration that would love to use this as an excuse to bomb Iraq but that
would be disastrous not only in terms of people of Iraq but also in terms of the
Muslim members of the coalition."
"I have not heard of any evidence either, so there has to be very clear
evidence before anything else happens, before something happens on that front. There
is no question about that," said Mr. Graham.
Asked what he'd do if UN Secretary General Koffi Annan sought his advice
on how to solve the problems in Iraq, Mr. Sponeck responded: "I would advise Mr. Annan
to insist, as a Secretary General, to continue your dialogue with Iraq. Get their
picture and make it a basis for interaction between Iraq and the full UN Security
Council. Propose and support immediate lifting of economic sanctions. Maintain the
military embargo and encourage King Abdullah and Mr. Amr Moussa of the Arab League to
more aggressively pursue the role of negotiators between Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq
and my third level of advice would be to discourage what is happening right now in
Northern Iraq in terms of intelligence involvement. Let there be an intra-Iraq
dialogue also apart from dialogue with Security Council and dialogue within the Arab
group of countries."
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