IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 131
Tuesday October 3, 2000
Minister says oil agreement with Iraq to be renewed
Engineer Wa'il Sabri, minister of energy and mineral resources, said the oil
agreement between Jordan and Iraq will be renewed in Baghdad in
mid-November.
In a statement to `Al-Arab-al-Yawm', Sabri said that he will leave for the
Iraqi capital mid-November to meet his Iraqi counterpart, Oil Minister Amir
Muhammad Rashid. At that time they will sign the
new agreement for the year 2001...
Source: 'Al-Arab al-Yawm', Amman, in Arabic 28 Sep 00
Russians to defy UN ban by resuming flights to Iraq
>From THE GUARDIAN, October 3rd, 2000
By EWEN MACASKILL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
Russia is set to clash with the US and Britain at the UN security council
this week after confirming it is to revive its scheduled flights to Iraq.
Britain and the US regard the Russian move as breaching the sanctions regime
imposed against the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, for trying to take
over Kuwait and starting the 1990-91 Gulf war. A Russian spokesman tried a
different interpretation yesterday, claiming commercial flights were not
covered by UN resolutions against Iraq.
Scheduled passenger flights between Moscow and Baghdad would drive a hole
through the crumbling sanctions regime and encourage President Saddam to
continue to defy the west.
There have been individual flights from Russia and France in the last month,
but scheduled flights would be a big change.
Iraq's minister for transport, Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil, on a visit to
Iran yesterday, disclosed that Aeroflot, would be resuming
commercial flights in a fortnight. He asked the Iranian government to allow
the Russians to use its airspace, according to the Iranian news agency,
Irna. An Aeroflot spokeswoman had said in Moscow earlier in the day that the
51% state-owned carrier intended to resume flights to Iraq. It had signed a
memorandum of understanding with Iraqi Airways, she said, but gave no
indication at that point of when the service would start.
In London, a Foreign Office source said last night: 'The resumption of
scheduled flights amounts to a resumption of trading relations, and that
would be a breach of sanctions.'
As well as trying to shore up the sanctions regime, the US and Britain also
send their warplanes over northern and southern Iraq,
denying air space to Iraqi fighters. The resumption of Russian commercial
flights would complicate an already tense and dangerous situation.
Both Russia and France - eager to do business with Iraq - have tried at the
UN to persuade the US and Britain to end the no-fly zones, set up after
Baghdad cracked down on northern Iraq's Kurds and southern Iraq's Shi'ites
following the Gulf war. A Russian spokesman in London defended the decision
to resume flights: 'According to our point of view, nothing in the
resolution of the security council forbids it.'
A British-inspired resolution was passed at the UN security council last
December holding out the possibility of a compromise over sanctions but
Baghdad has rejected it. The new move by Russia, the country's London
spokesman said, should be taken as a signal that the world community must
act to overcome this impasse: 'We have to do something.'
The US and Britain have become increasingly isolated this year. While the
international community feels repugnance towards President
Saddam, there is also a growing sense that sanctions and the no-fly zone are
hurting civilians rather than the regime. Britain has shown signs of wilting
but the US, especially in a presidential election year, has remained
resolute. Opponents of sanctions claimed that the US secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright, who was in Paris yesterday, threatened France that any
country flying to Iraq would be denied the right to fly to the US. A Russian
source said he had heard of such a threat but dismissed it as 'rhetoric'.
In Cairo, the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, and the Egyptian president,
Hosni Mubarak, were asked whether they were considering resuming flights to
Iraq, following the lead of France, Russia, Yemen and Jordan in challenging
the UN sanctions by sending individual flights styled as humanitarian. Mr
Mubarak said that if there was private sector interest, his government would
not object.
DESPITE U.S. OPPOSITION, HUSSEIN IN `GREAT SHAPE'
>From CHICAGO TRIBUNE, October 2nd, 2000
By John Diamond, Washington Bureau.
The U.S. strategy of containment against Iraq is unraveling amid rising oil
prices, bickering among allies and concern about the suffering of the Iraqi
people. President Saddam Hussein's hold on power is as strong as ever.
Using money diverted from the UN-sanctioned oil-for-food program, his
military has begun to rebuild from the damage sustained in the Persian Gulf
war.
The surge in fuel prices suddenly places the West in the awkward posture of
beseeching Iraq not to cut crude oil production.
"Make no mistake about it. Iraq is awash with money," said Richard Butler,
the former UN weapons inspector whose team was turned out of Iraq two years
ago.
"The regime is in great shape," he told lawmakers last week.
Mild protestations from Washington have done nothing to stop an increasing
flow of commercial flights into Iraq from France, Russia, Jordan and Yemen.
Iraq has avoided international arms inspections for two years, leaving the
Pentagon in the dark as to Baghdad's arsenal.
The economic sanctions kept in place at Washington's urging are coming under
increasing attack not only from countries such as Russia and France that
hope to do a booming business with Iraq but also from U.S. lawmakers of both
parties concerned about the effect on nutrition and infant mortality in
Iraq.
No one seems happy with the U.S. containment strategy.
But after months of intensive internal review by the Clinton administration,
no workable alternative has emerged. Admitting frustration, the
administration counsels patience while Hussein gives every indication that
time is on his side.
"We would like to see Saddam gone," Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering
told Arab journalists recently. "But I can't tell you that there is a magic
formula to see this done. Our magic formula, in reality, is patience.
... It is not a perfect policy." One of the participants in Capitol Hill's
policy review was retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, until recently the head
of the U.S. military command in charge of the Persian Gulf region.
Zinni has briefed senior administration officials on a secret war plan that
details how the U.S. military, with limited allied help, would seek to
topple Hussein. The effort would be massive, involving possibly as many as
half a million troops, according to one knowledgeable official.
Although he has confidence in U.S. forces, Zinni has no illusions that such
a scheme could win public support, considering the cost in lives and dollars
it would almost certainly involve.
Nor, he said, would any gulf nation allow such an offensive to spring from
its territory without a major provocation by Iraq.
"I wracked my brain for over four years to come up with a strategy other
than containment that might work," Zinni told the Senate Armed Services
Committee. "I have to be honest with you: I didn't come up with a better
one.
Containment is what you do when you can't come up with the popular will to
take decisive military action." The gulf war almost a decade ago left
Hussein with a shaky hold on power.
Armchair generals complained that the Bush administration ended the war too
soon and blew a chance to drive Hussein from power.
Bush allies such as retired Gen. Colin Powell, then the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and now an active supporter of Texas Gov. George
W.Bush's run for the presidency, call those criticisms preposterous. They
say the coalition of nations, including many Arab countries, would have
fallen apart had the United States marched on Baghdad.
Nevertheless, the notion that Hussein somehow survived because of U.S.
weakness has persisted, and the Iraqi leader's ability to tweak Washington
has remained a major foreign policy irritant to the Clinton administration
for the past eight years.
Since the gulf war, the United States has spent $8 billion building up an
arsenal in the gulf, deploying thousands of troops to the region, conducting
occasional "pinprick" strikes, and flying hundreds of combat sorties over
northern and southern Iraq. Under U.S. and allied scrutiny, Iraq has
refrained from threatening military moves against its neighbors, and for
this reason U.S. allies in the gulf such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman
continue to allow a U.S. military presence.
But the 30-nation coalition that fought Iraq in 1991 has nearly evaporated.
Only U.S. and British warplanes participate in keeping Iraqi planes from
entering the northern and southern Iraq no-fly zones.
"Why is the United States virtually alone?" Sen. John Warner (R-Va.),
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked at a recent hearing.
Frustrated by Iraq's ability to defy international sanctions and to throw
out U.S. arms inspectors, Congress passed legislation two years ago to
funnel $97 million to opposition groups seeking to topple Hussein. Yet so
far, the money has gone to fax machines and copiers, and not a single bullet
has been purchased with the aid, according to Clinton administration
reports.
Opponents of Hussein inside Iraq are far too weak to challenge his regime.
Arab-language newspapers have reported that he has cancer and that the
recent flights from France carried medical specialists to treat him. But
U.S.
intelligence dismisses this as wishful thinking, saying there's no evidence
to support rumors that Hussein is ailing.
Richard Perle, a senior Reagan administration official and close adviser to
Gov. Bush, advocates a more active U.S. military role, including arming and
training indigenous Iraqi opposition groups.
"It is increasingly clear that the only solution to the danger posed by
Saddam Hussein is a sustained, determined plan to remove him from power,"
Perle said. "Saddam has emerged from each new bombing stronger than before.
Support for sanctions, whose most visible effect is the impoverishment of
the Iraqi people, is sinking fast." The technical term used by the Pentagon
to explain the current military posture toward Iraq is "keeping Saddam in
his box." Increasingly it appears Washington is boxed in by its own Iraq
policy.
The United States got involved in the gulf war for economic reasons. "Jobs,
jobs, jobs," was how then-Secretary of State James Baker explained it.
The idea was that aggression by one nation in the heart of the world's
richest oil region would upset energy markets, with potentially enormous
repercussions in the United States, perhaps leading to recession and
unemployment.
To win public support for waging the gulf war, however, Washington had to
demonize Hussein, and the Iraqi leader gave the Bush administration plenty
of material.
There were his Scud missile attacks on Israel and poison gas attacks on his
own Kurdish population in the north in the late 1980s. There was the brutal
treatment of Kuwait during Iraq's occupation.
Immediately after the war, there was the iron-fisted repression of an
uprising by the so-called marsh Arabs in southern Iraq. Subsequent UN
inspections revealed a huge Iraqi chemical and biological weapons program
and the beginnings of a nuclear weapons effort.
Today, the rest of the world appears to see Iraq in economic terms, as a
possible trading partner, as holder of the world's second-largest oil
reserves whose production capacity could ease the latest fuel price spike.
The State Department acknowledges that even if Hussein observed all the
requirements imposed by the UN, the containment policy would remain until he
was out of power.
With no arms inspectors inside Iraq, it is difficult to tell whether Hussein
has reconstituted his programs to build weapons of mass destruction.
But there is some evidence to indicate that he is.
Despite the suspicions of an arms buildup by Baghdad, the administration,
pressured by France and Russia in the UN Security Council, has acquiesced
repeatedly on Iraq.
Just last week, the U.S. lifted its earlier objections and voted to allow
Iraq to lower the percentage of its oil revenue that must go into a fund to
compensate victims of Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence suspects that some of the food and drugs Iraq
is buying with oil money are being exported for cash the regime can use for
weapons.
Stephen Solarz, a former Democratic congressman from New York known for his
foreign policy expertise, told Congress last week that the United States has
declared its intention of toppling Hussein without a plan that offers a
realistic hope of achieving that objective.
"We're paying a very heavy price in terms of our credibility in the region,"
Solarz said.
Voice of the people (letter). IRAQI SANCTIONS
>From CHICAGO TRIBUNE, October 2nd, 2000
Mark Gery.
Contrary to your Sept. 25 editorial "How will history judge Iraq policy?"
the moral responsibility for the 1 million Iraqi deaths caused by sanctions
lies not with Iraq but with the United States government.
Since the end of the Gulf War, it has been the policy of the U.S. to
maintain the sanctions, not until weapons of mass destruction are destroyed,
as the cease-fire agreement clearly stipulates, but for as long as the
current Iraqi regime remains in power. This hideous and immoral policy is
nothing less than our government's spiteful response for failing to vanquish
Iraq's leader and his military during the war.
Mount flights to Iraq.
>From NEW STRAITS TIMES, October 2nd, 2000
By Patvinder Singh KUALA LUMPUR, Sun. - The Government hopes
non-governmental organisations will organise mercy flights to Iraq and will
provide assistance for the humanitarian efforts, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri
Syed Hamid Albar said today.
He said Malaysia had never believed in the open-ended sanction regime
imposed on Iraq which had caused many humanitarian problems.
"We are, therefore, very happy to see that countries have taken steps to
have mercy flights to Iraq to assist the Iraqis," Syed Hamid told reporters
at the finals of the Malaysian Youth Council National Badminton Teams
Championship at the MAYC building here.
He was responding to reports of a spate of flights into Baghdad that were
seen as an increasing challenge to decade-old sanctions imposed after Iraq's
1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Russia, France and Jordan have sent planes to Baghdad carrying medicine,
doctors and other relief aid while Yemen and Iceland have proposed flights.
France has mounted the biggest challenge to the US-backed embargo by
refusing to abide by the procedures of the United Nations sanctions
committee requiring that the UN Security Council be given 24 hours to review
proposed flights.
"In Malaysia's case, we hope that NGOs organise mercy flights to Baghdad to
take in medicine and other goods. We will do anything within our means to
assist them to go to Iraq," Syed Hamid said.
He said it had always been Malaysia's position that the no-fly zone over
Iraq was illegal under international law and should not have been imposed
because there was no authority or sanction from the Security Council.
"That being the situation, it is only proper for these countries to
undertake mercy flights to take in medicine and supplies which are very much
needed," he said.
He said he had been told that Umno Youth's international bureau was planning
to undertake a trip to Baghdad and had approached the Foreign Ministry for
assistance in its attempt to take medicines and other related products for
the Iraqis.
"They will be working with other NGOs. They have to make the flight
arrangements (and get) the aircraft for this purpose. What Wisma Putra will
have to do is to inform the UN and after that we have to make the necessary
plans." Asked if the Government would provide an aircraft, he said it had
yet to be decided.
He said under the oil for food programme for Iraq or when it was for the
supply of medicine, it was not contrary to UN resolutions to provide
humanitarian aid.
The minister was also asked about the Singapore Air Force's request to the
island republic's Defence Ministry to buy "advanced medium-range air-to-air
missiles", otherwise known as Amraams.
Syed Hamid said it was Malaysia's foreign policy that whatever a country's
defence system did for its security was not for Malaysia to say.
However, he said, at the Asean level it was important that "we do not give
rise to tense situations or worry among Asean countries".
Iraqi deputy premier receives British Labour Party MP George Galloway
October 2nd, 2000
Text of report by Iraqi TV on 1st October
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz received British Labour Party MP George
Galloway, who is visiting Iraq to attend the Jerusalem
seminar. The seminar will be held tomorrow. Tariq Aziz expressed his
appreciation for Galloway's continuous efforts to expose and
lay bare the crime of the blockade imposed on Iraq. During the meeting, the
two men reviewed the international efforts against
the blockade imposed on Iraq. They also reviewed future activities in this
regard.
Galloway expressed satisfaction with the continued air flights to Iraq.
These flights were organized by forces, parties, and
nongovernmental organizations and proved the illegitimacy of the air embargo
imposed on Iraq. Fawwaz Zurayqat, secretary of the Jordanian Popular
Committee for Solidarity with Iraq, attended the meeting.
Source: Iraqi TV, Baghdad, in Arabic 1900 gmt 1 Oct 00
Arabs must follow Saladin's example to capture Jerusalem: Iraq
BAGHDAD, Oct 2 (AFP) - Iraq urged the Arab world to follow the example of
Muslim hero Saladin and recapture Jerusalem, warning that Palestine could
not be freed through "bargaining and concessions."
"The Arabs have to learn the lesson of Saladin's liberation of Palestine and
Jerusalem," said the ruling party's newspaper, Ath-Thawra, in reaction to
the killing of 36 Palestinians in clashes with Israeli forces.
"Palestine will not be won back through bargaining and concessions made from
a position of weakness but through mobilisation of all resources and
collective Arab support for the Palestinians."
Pouring scorn on the US-sponsored peace process, Ath-Thawra warned that
Washington "cannot be a friend or honest broker in any Arab cause,
especially not the Palestinian one."
Saladin's historic victory over the Crusaders in 1187, which is marked by
discussions at Iraqi universities each October 2, led to the capture of the
holy city for the Muslims.
A Kurdish warrior who commanded Egyptian and Syrian troops in the battle
for Jerusalem, Saladin was from Tikrit in northern Iraq where Iraqi
President
Saddam Hussein was also born.
The Iraqi government, in its first reaction to several days of bloodshed in
the Palestinian territories, called on Sunday for "a jihad (holy war) to
liberate Palestine".
Assad urges Arabs to push for end to sanctions on Iraq
CAIRO, Oct 2 (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad here Monday urged Arab
countries to push for an end to the 10-year international sanctions on Iraq,
saying they will soon destroy the country.
"After 10 years of sanctions imposed on Iraq, we Arabs should reconsider the
question," Assad said at a joint press conference with Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak. "We must work for a lifting of sanctions." "We must ask
ourselves what is the goal of the embargo and what is its result," he said
on his first foreign trip since he succeeded his late father Hafez al-Assad
as president in July.
"The goal was to punish Iraq but the result is not punishment. The result
will be soon the destruction of Iraq. The Arabs have no interest in seeing
the destruction of Iraq," he said.
"We must end the suffering of the Iraqi people one way or another, by taking
into consideration the need for relations to be good between Iraq and
Kuwait, and for no threats to be made by one party or the other," he added.
"Iraq is an Arab country and Arab-Arab meetings are needed, despite all the
differences," he said. "Iraq is a geographic, human and cultural weight" for
the Arabs, he said.
The sanctions, adopted by the UN Security Council, were imposed after Iraq
invaded Kuwait in August 1990, to be defeated seven months later by a US-led
coalition which Egypt and Syria joined.
Under the resolutions, UN disarmament experts must certify that Iraq has
scrapped its weapons of mass destruction before the embargo is totally
lifted.
Other economic sanctions are to be removed when it complies with other
demands such as accounting for missing Kuwaitis and made war reparations.
Last week Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara called for the removal of
the UN embargo after he met in Damascus with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Tareq Aziz.
Aziz was last in Syria in 1997, as Damascus and Baghdad started to normalize
their relations.
The two countries, ruled by rival branches of the Baath party, broke off
diplomatic ties in the early 1980s because of Damascus' support for Tehran
in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
They started to normalize relations by opening their common border to
businessmen and officials in 1997, and in March 1999 Iraq opened an
interests section in Damascus. Iraq's foreign and trade ministers have been
notable among the top Iraqis who have since visited Syria.
Iraqi candidate stays in race to be new OPEC chief
BAGHDAD, Oct 2 (AFP) - Iraq is to maintain its candidate for the post of
OPEC secretary general, in a three-way contest with Saudi Arabia and Iran,
Oil Minister Amer Rashid said Monday.
The minister also slammed Washington's decision last month to tap into its
strategic oil reserves.
"Iraq renews its candidacy of Abdel Amir al-Anbari for the OPEC secretary
general's post and we will reiterate this at the (cartel's) next meeting" on
November 12 in Vienna, he said, quoted by the official news agency INA.
The Arab daily Al-Hayat reported in August that Iraq had offered to withdraw
Anbari to make way for a Venezuelan candidate, following a Baghdad visit by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Rilwanu Lukman of Nigeria stayed on beyond his term as secretary general of
the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in September 1999 after
none
of the three candidates won unanimous approval.
New elections were to have been organised during the OPEC summit held in
Caracas at the end of September.
Rashid said the US administration's decision to tap into its strategic oil
reserves was an election ploy and predicted it would have no lasting impact
on the world market.
"It's an unjustifiable measure on the oil and political fronts because it
will have no effect on the current situation," he said. "It will not settle
the problems created by the US administration on the world market."
US President Bill Clinton on September 23 ordered the release of 30 million
barrels of oil from the country's emergency reserves to head off shortages
and curb soaring prices.
CALL FOR IRAQI SANCTIONS TO BE LIFTED
By Andrew Evans, Lords Staff, PA News
A Labour peer called today for UN sanctions on Iraqi oil production to be
eased in a bid to tackle the worldwide fuel crisis.
Lord Islwyn, the former Newport East MP Roy Hughes, asked at question time:
``Would it not be helpful in the current situation if Iraq were brought back
into full production?'' And he claimed that the USA was now buying Iraqi
oil, through third parties.
Junior trade minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville replied: ``Clearly anything
which increases the supply of oil will help this particular situation. But
in terms of whether this is desirable or not, that is of course another
question.'' Lord Sainsbury had earlier told peers: ``I think it is very
likely that volatility will continue in crude oil prices in the future.''
But he saw no obvious long-term solutions to prevent such future price
fluctuations.
Liberal Democrat Lord Ezra, a former chairman of the National Coal Board,
had suggested encouraging moves towards alternative energy sources. Lord
Sainsbury, noting that oil prices had been low 18 months ago, commented:
``The reality is that, over this period, there have been ups and downs which
relate to supply and demand but no fundamental change in the underlying
structure of that particular industry.''
Annan Recommends U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Mission Renewal
UNITED NATIONS (Oct. 2) XINHUA - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday
recommended the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait
Observation Mission (UNIKOM) for a further period time of six months.
In a report to the Security Council, Annan said the situation along the
border between Iraq and Kuwait "remained generally quiet " during the
reporting period form March 31 to September 21. Annan said, "UNIKOM
continued to carry out its tasks smoothly, thereby
contributing to the maintenance of calm and stability along the border."
"In undertaking these tasks, it continued to receive the cooperation of the
Iraqi and Kuwaiti authorities," the U.N. chief said.
The mission, established after the 1991 Gulf War, was to monitor a
demilitarized zone on either side of the Kuwait-Iraq border. The mission has
195 military observers and a 755-member infantry battalion as well as a
helicopter unit.
Iraq Seeks Permission to Use Iran's Airspace
TEHRAN (Oct. 2) XINHUA - Visiting Iraqi Minister of Transport and
Communications Ahmad Murtadha Ahmad Khalil here on Monday called on Iran to
permit Russian planes to use its air space to fly to Baghdad.
In a meeting with Iranian Minister of Road and Transport Mahmoud Hojjati,
Khalil said Russian planes are expected to resume regular flights to Baghdad
soon and Iraq seeks the use of Iran's air corridor for Russian planes, the
Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
He said both Russia and France have decided to resume regular flights to
Iraq soon. In the meeting, Khalil also mentioned the Iraqi planes that were
spirited to Iran on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, expressing hope that
Tehran would permit Iraqi technicians to check them. He added that Iraq also
has several planes in other neighboring states and they have allowed Iraqi
technicians to check them for maintenance.
Iraq maintains that it has 115 warplanes and 33 civilian planes in Iran and
demanded that Tehran return them. But Iran has said it has possession of
only 22 planes and is ready to return them if the United Nations, which
imposes sanctions on Iraq due to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, agrees.
According to the report, Baghdad will allow Iran to go through its territory
en route to Syria. Iraq has informed the Iranian embassy in Baghdad of the
matter, Khalil said.
Hojjati, for his part, said Iran is willing to develop cooperation with
Baghdad especially in the field of transport. He added that Iran also
prefers to use the Iraqi route instead of the current Turkish route.
On the Iraqi airplanes, the minister said the planes are not under control
of his ministry and the leaders of the two countries would reach a
settlement on the matter.
He also said his ministry will study the possibility of giving passage for
foreign planes flying to Baghdad. Hojjati stressed that Iran has good
cooperation with Syria and called for Iraqi participation in a tripartite
meeting to develop regional cooperation on transport. Iran is ready to link
its railway network to that of Iraq and give ports services to Iraq for
shipment of goods to that country, he said.
Ahmad Khalil arrived in Tehran on Friday to open the Iraqi pavilion at the
26th Tehran International Trade Fair that started on Saturday with the
participation of more than 1,000 foreign companies. Twelve years have passed
since the two neighbors ended their eight-year bloody war, but bilateral
relations have remained restrained due to such issues as prisoners of war
and the support of each other's opposition groups.
In recent days, however, ties between the two neighbors have showed signs of
improvement. President Mohammad Khatami of Iran met with Iraq Vice President
Taha Yassin Ramadan in Caracas on September 29 on the sidelines of the
second summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
The meeting is thought to be the highest level contact between the two sides
in nine years. There are also reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal
Kharrazi is to pay a visit to Baghdad to examine ways of improving
relations.
MISCELLANY++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I wonder whether you might put details of a new e-discuss� group on all
issues pertaining to man-made ionising radiation (DU high on the list.) It
relates to the UK but also elsewhere in the world and is to operate on the
lines of the excellent Downwinders site/discussion in the US. Requested
information to be posted/collated includes legislation, hearings, licensing
hearings, campaigns, personal testimonies, conferences and apt scientific
and parliamentary references. This is a timely addition to the DU/radiation
debate re cancers and birth defects in Iraq, especially as DU is now being
incorporated into building structures, roads and soon in a frying pan near
you.
To subscribe: http://www.egroups.com/group/rad-UK� and click subscribe.
Mariam Appeal to launch Iraq International
Work Brigades
The London based Mariam Appeal recently announced their plans to form
monthly international work brigades who will help build a friendship village
in Iraq beginning May 2001. Mr Stuart Halford the Director of the Mariam
Appeal told ISM that the monthly work brigades will under the supervision of
Iraqi tradesmen and engineers engage in "reconciliation through
reconstruction" in an original form of international solidarity.
Brigadiers will be in Iraq for exactly one month at a time from May until
October 2001 and every year thereafter. They will have a programme of
construction work in the mornings, lectures and discussions in the
afternoons and social and cultural activities in the evenings. Participants
should be able to speak either English or Arabic (there will be a translator
always on hand) and should be aged 18 and over. And of course they will need
to be fit enough for light construction duties and the heat of the Iraqi
summer. Brigadiers will be asked to make a contribution towards travel to
Amman. All other costs will be met by the Mariam Appeal which will fundraise
for that purpose.
For further information please contact Stuart Halford at the Mariam Appeal.
tel: +44 (0)20 7403 5200
fax: +44 (0)20 7403 3823
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: www.mariamappeal.com
