IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 189
Tuesday, January 16, 2001
The daily Monitor is produced by the Mariam Appeal.
Tel: 00 44 (0) 207 403 5200.
Website: www.mariamappeal.com.
Iraqi children of the Gulf War relive the terror
BAGHDAD, Jan 16 (AFP) - Iraqis who were just children when
the Gulf War broke out a decade ago on Wednesday say they
can never forget the fear of the bombs raining down on the Iraqi
capital.
"I can never forget the terror I lived through with my little sisters," =
Salman Mohammad told AFP on the anniversary of the six-week
war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
"I was very young but will always remember the start of the air
raids on Baghdad during the night" of January 16-17.
In darkness, the international coalition led by the United States
unleashed wave after wave of missiles and warplanes to launch
Operation Desert Storm.
"The flashes of light were very intense and the noise of the
explosions which followed were horrible," said Salman, today a
19-year-old student of Baghdad University.
"I can still hear my father speaking: 'From now on we will all
sleep in the same room and we will all survive together or we
will all die together,'" Salman said.
The allies targeted Iraq's air defenses, military and economic
infrastructre after President Saddam Hussein rejected an
ultimatum to withdraw from oil-rich Kuwait.
On every anniversary, bookshop assistant Maisun Ibrahim, 20,
relives the terrible moment when war began. "Terror became
our lives for two months," she said.
"No one knew what to do -- stay at home or flee to the
countryside to avoid the strikes," Ibrahim recalled.
"Most of our neighbours went to stay with relatives in villages
around Baghdad but our family followed the course of the hated
war from our home in Baghdad.
"I had never imagined that war could spill over from the
battlefield and that cities could turn into combat zones," the
young woman said.
Luay Majed, today 21, can still smile about the fact that the war
saved him from school.
But today he has no education and sells newspapers on the
streets to try to make ends meet.
"All the schools closed during the war and we were at last rid of
homework, " he laughed.
"We went to bed and got up when we felt like it, but we could not
go too far from the house in the evening because of the
blackouts," Majed said.
But he too remembers the air raids like a nightmare.
"May God curse those days, the intensity of the raids and the
noise of the blasts were like a nightmare haunting us," Majed
said.
Civil defence chief General Kassem al-Shamri said Monday
that Iraq was blasted with the equivalent of seven nuclear
bombs of the type used on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
This was calculated from a total of 141,921 tonnes of
ammunition fired at Iraq, including 940,000 rounds of depleted
uranium (DU) weaponry.
"The air raid warning sirens still ring in my head," said Dina
Abdullah, a 24-year-old architect.
"Every time I heard them my whole body stiffened. Every time I
would hide in a corner of the house convinced that a missile
was going to land on top of
us," Abdullah said.
"Images of the war remain engraved in our memories and will
be passed on to our children and our grandchildren," she said.
Iraqi losses are estimated at 100,000 dead.
_________________________________________________
Saudi Naimi confirms notified buyers of cuts planned Feb. 1
>From BRIDGENEWS GLOBAL MARKETS, January 16th, 2001
--Naimi says OPEC, Saudis will make up any Iraq shortfall
--Saudi Naimi: Some OPEC members still urging bigger output
cuts
--Saudi Naimi reiterates 1.5-mln-bpd OPEC output cut needed
now
--Saudi Naimi says OPEC will see what needs to be done in
March
Vienna--Jan. 16--Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi said
Tuesday the world's biggest oil producer has already notified
customers of its planned output cuts of close to 500,000 barrels
per day from Feb. 1 in line with an expected OPEC supply
reduction of a total 1.5 million bpd. He also said OPEC and
Saudi Arabia are prepared to prevent any shortfall in world oil
supplies either from a shortfall in Iraqi supplies or other
disruptions.
________________________________________________
British oil giants in talks with Baghdad: report
LONDON, Jan 16 (AFP) - Oil giants Shell and Premier Oil have
had talks with Baghdad with a view to exploiting Iraqi production
when UN-imposed sanctions are lifted against the country, the
BBC reported Tuesday.
It said Anglo-Dutch Shell and Premier Oil, which is British, had
recently held technical talks on an initial contract worth some
two billion dollars (2. 1 billion euros).
The discussions have been suspended and no accord has
been reached, the BBC added.
News of the reported talks emerged on the 10th anniversary of
the start of the Gulf War, and at a time when the sanctions
imposed over Baghdad's invasion of Kuwait are increasingly
contested.
Neither Shell nor Premier Oil were immediately available for
comment.
Iraq is allowed to sell some oil, but only to buy food and
medicines.
________________________________________________
SANCTIONS PROTESTERS PLAN COMMONS LOBBY
>From PA NEWS, January 16th, 2001
Hundreds of demonstrators were today expected to gather
outside the House of Commons in protest at economic
sanctions on Iraq.
Campaigners from several groups - including the controversial
Reclaim the Streets organisation and CND - are calling for MPs
to ``account for their complicity in the suffering of the Iraqi people
under sanctions''.
And four activists who claim they have broken UN sanctions by
taking medical supplies and toys to Iraq were due to hand in a
letter at Downing Street to inform the Prime Minister of their
actions.
The representatives from Voices in the Wilderness - who claim
they face jail for breaking sanctions - have written a letter to Tony
Blair to demand he end economic sanctions against Iraq.
Scotland Yard is aware of the sanctions protest, planned to start
at midday, and security was expected to be stepped up around
Westminster.
The sanctions campaigners will join fox hunt supporters who
have maintained a vigil outside Parliament in a bid to save their
sport.
MPs are today expected to vote in support of a move to
criminalise fox hunting under the Hunting Bill.
More than 600 people from 11 hunts in Cornwall and Devon
were also due to meet in Camelford, Cornwall, to send a
message of defiance to Whitehall, along with representatives
from all of the South West's 66 hunts.
The anti-sanction demonstration will feature a samba band,
puppets and the Cardiff Red Choir.
Organisers have warned that there will be ``several direct action
surprises''.
They argue that as a result of the sanctions imposed on Iraq
since the Gulf War children are dying of malnutrition, lack of
medicine and contaminated water.
The taxpayer is footing the bill for ongoing bombing of Iraq by
British war planes at the rate of £4 million a month, the activists
claim.
The activists who claim they have broken UN sanctions said the
economic restrictions had led to a deterioration of health
conditions across Iraq, including chronic malnourishment
among 800,000 under five-year-olds.
The four representatives from Voices in the Wilderness claim
they face up to five years in jail for breaking the UN sanctions but
returned to Britain last night to mark the 10th anniversary of the
Gulf conflict.
During their visit the group visited paediatric hospitals in
Baghdad and Basra delivering medical supplies and toys to
children.
One of the group, Milan Rai, who was making his third trip to Iraq
with supplies, said: ``Children are still sick and malnourished as
a result and the supply of basic drugs to treat them is still
inadequate.'' Fellow activist Richard Byrne said the four were
deliberately breaking the sanctions to urge the Government to
change their economic sanctions policy.
He said: ``We cannot co-operate with a system which 10 years
after the Gulf War is still causing so much suffering to ordinary
people.
``Breaking the sanctions is an act of civil disobedience against
the British government's criminal policy over Iraq.'' Members of
Voices in the Wilderness have made seven trips to Iraq since the
end of the conflict. None of their members has yet to be
prosecuted for their actions, a spokeswoman said.
She added that the group did not oppose military sanctions.
The four flew to Jordan from Britain on January 2 and travelled by
car to Iraq. They would only break British sanctions if they flew
direct from Britain to Iraq, a Foreign Office spokesman said.
A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry said
taking medical supplies to Iraq was not breaking sanctions as
long as the group had permission from the UN and had
informed the government from where it had flown as to its
intentions.
________________________________________________
Saddam poses as fairy godfather to US poor
>From THE GUARDIAN, January 16th, 2001
President-elect George W Bush's plans to cut government aid to
the poor and let private philanthropists shoulder the burden is
already reaping its reward. It was announced yesterday that
100m had been donated to impoverished Americans by a certain
S Hussein of Baghdad.
Despite a decade of biting international sanctions and a poverty
rate in Iraq of more than 50%, Saddam Hussein has apparently
decided to mark the tenth anniversary of the Gulf war by sending
humanitarian aid to America's inner cities and rural poor.
A statement put out by the Iraqi News Agency (INA) said a
special commission would be set up to help supervise the
distribution of the funds.
Given the current state of relations between the two countries, it
is unlikely that the US will allow Saddam's uniformed lieutenants
to wander the streets of the Bronx or east
Washington,distributing his dole, which would work out at about
Dollars 3 for each American living under the poverty line.
The INA statement said the UN would be told of the donation,
suggesting that its aid workers might help implement the
programme.
The UN in New York said it had had no word from Baghdad
about the donation, and its response would depend on where
the money was coming from.
Since the Gulf war Iraq has been allowed to use the proceeds of
it oil sales only to buy food, medicine and other essentials for its
own people.
'It's unclear if this is money the government of Iraq has lying
around or if it comes from the oil-for-food deal,' the UN
spokesman said.
'If it is from the oil-for-food deal, then it would have to go before
the security council sanctions committee, to see if [it] would be
allowed.'
The committee is still bemused by Saddam Hussein's previous
philanthropic outburst, in December: the promise of 1bn - he
refuses to talk dollars - to help the Palestinian struggle against
Israel.
In the West Bank and Gaza they are not holding their breath: his
earlier promises to send troops came to nothing.
But his claim to have so much cash to send abroad may end up
hurting his efforts to have the sanctions lifted. Some security
council members are said to have questioned whether the
sanctions regime is tough enough, if he has so much money to
give away.
________________________________________________
Iraq to ask OPEC for big reduction in oil production, minister
says
Text of report by Iraqi radio on 14 January
Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rashid has stated that Iraq will
ask the forthcoming OPEC [Organization of Petroleum-Exporting
Countries] meeting, which will be held in Vienna on 17 January,
to reduce the organization's production by 2m barrels per day
[BPD].
At a news conference today, Rashid said Iraq will also demand
another reduction of 1m BPD during the organization's meeting
next March because of the expected reduction in oil demands in
the second quarter of this year, estimated at 2m to 2.5m BPD.
He said OPEC is suffering a problem resulting from an increase
in supply and a reduction in demand as a result of US and Saudi
pressures. This, he said, requires serious treatment, otherwise
the prices will remain low.
The oil minister said the US stand on this subject is very
shortsighted, manifesting an attempt to control the resources of
the OPEC states. He said Saudi Arabia submits to US pressure,
which will adversely affect producers' interests.
The oil minister denounced the stands of the US and British
representatives on the 661 committee because they exercised
political pressure on the oil supervisors concerning a
mechanism for the Iraqi oil prices. He said despite all these
pressures and the US and British interventions, Iraq succeeded
in reaching an appropriate price mechanism on 13 December
for exporting Iraqi oil.
The oil minister said that the only way to end the Iraqi people's
suffering is to lift the blockade completely. The oil-for-food
formula, with its complicated mechanisms, cannot solve the
issue. This is because experience over the past three years has
proved the failure of this formula in meeting the basic needs of
the Iraqis [words indistinct] the US administration and the British
government want as a substitute for lifting the embargo.
Answering a question on Iraq's stand on UN Security Council
Resolution 1284, Rashid reiterated Iraq's rejection of this
resolution because it increases the effect of the sanctions and
does not meet Iraq's legitimate needs, especially the lifting of the
unjust embargo which has been imposed on our people for over
10 years.
________________________________________________
Saddam's MP son reclaims Kuwait as part of `Greater Iraq`
BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (AFP) - MP Uday Saddam Hussein, elder
son of the Iraqi president, has renewed claims to Kuwait as
forming part of a "Greater Iraq," in an excerpt of a report to
parliament released on Monday.
He called for the National Assembly "to prepare a map of the
whole of Iraq, including Kuwait City as an integral part of Greater
Iraq ...
"The current map of Iraq, which is the emblem of the National
Assembly, does not include all Iraq's borders as known by the
people in all their components, namely Kuwait City."
Uday's report, delivered last month during his first appearance
in the house and which has since been serialised in his Babel
newspaper, makes a string of recommendations to parliament,
including a call for political reforms.
The renewal of claims over Kuwait comes on the eve of the 10th
anniversary of the Gulf War triggered by Baghdad's invasion of
the emirate in August 1990 and its annexation as Iraq's 19th
province.
A US-led multinational coalition evicted Iraqi occupation forces
in February 1991 at the end of the six-week conflict. Three years
later, Iraq officially recognised the state of Kuwait and its
UN-demarcated borders.
________________________________________________
British activists say water and sanitation biggest killers in Iraq
AMMAN, Jan 15 (AFP) - British activists from the charity group
Voice in the Wilderness on Monday said contaminated water
was the "biggest killer" in Iraq and vowed to fight for an urgent
lifting of UN sanctions against Baghdad.
"It doesn't matter how much food and medicine is being poured
into Iraq, water and sanitation are the biggest killers and the
systems must be repaired quickly to save more lives," group
leader Richard Byrne told AFP in Amman at the end of an
eight-day trip to Iraq.
"We visited hospitals in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra
(devastated in the Gulf war) and spoke to doctors and the UN
humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad," Byrne said.
Doctors complained that they are daily confronted by numerous
cases of children suffering from intestinal and urinary tract bugs
from drinking polluted water, that lead to malnutrition and
eventually to death.
"Doctors say they can give the children all the medicine they
need but when these children go home they return to living
conditions of squalor, open sewers, broken water pipes, no
electricity to pump water," Byrne said.
"So unless the electricity and the water delivery systems are
quickly repaired Iraqi children are going to continue to die at a
very high rate," Byrne said.
Byrne and the three activists who accompanied him to Iraq are
due to protest Tuesday outside 10 Downing Street, the British
prime minister's official residence, and then join an
anti-sanctions protest later in the day outside the House of
Commons.
"We will challenge the government to prosecute us for breaking
the export and import laws and we are taking back with us dates,
scarves, books and postcards bought in Iraq to sell outside the
House of Commons," he said.
The group is also scheduled to give a series of television and
radio interviews when they return home as well as press for the
election of an anti-sanctions MP during forthcoming elections in
Britain, he said.
"Our government must realise that we need to lift the sanctions
now and not in a slow way to contain the humanitarian crisis and
allow for quick repairs of the water and electricity systems,"
Byrne said.
Byrne was accompanied to Iraq by Brighton writer Milan Rai,
social worker Les Gibbons from Southampton and Birmingham
restaurant manager Zia Chowdhury.
They took with them toys, medical journals and supplies in
defiance of the sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of
Kuwait. This week sees the 10th anniversary of the start of the
US-led offensive against Baghad which ended the Iraqi
occupation of the emirate.
_________________________________________________
Iraq was hit with force of seven nuclear bombs in 1991: civil
defence chief
BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (AFP) - Iraq during the 1991 Gulf conflict was
blasted with the equivalent of seven nuclear bombs of the type
used on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, civil defence chief
General Kassem al-Shamri said Monday.
Shamri, quoted in the official daily Ath-Thawra, said the US-led
military coalition which liberated Kuwait in the six-week conflict
that started on the night of January 16-17, 1991 fired a total of
141,921 tonnes of ammunition at Iraq.
As many as 940,000 rounds of depleted uranium (DU)
weaponry were used, which together with the explosion of two
allied military vehicles loaded with DU arms "polluted the
environment and caused great damage to the public's health,"
he said.
Al-Jumhuriya, another official newspaper, blamed DU for the
deaths of 50, 000 Iraqi children in 1991 alone and said it was
behind a dramatic increase in cancer rates over the past
decade, citing a report from Iraqi experts.
Iraq has long argued that US and British use of DU weapons
during the Gulf conflict caused "irreparable damage" to its
people and environment, also pointing to previously unknown
congenital deformities among infants.
NATO agreed last week to establish a special committee to
investigate possible health risks from the use of DU munitions
after a series of cancer deaths among veterans of the Balkans
conflict.
Conclusions about the environmental impact of DU used in
both the Balkans and Iraq will not be known until March, UN
environmental experts said Thursday.
DU emits low levels of radiation, and is so far only considered
to be dangerous if fragments are inhaled or ingested. The
material is used to penetrate armour and concrete bunkers
because it is denser than other metals.
_________________________________________________
Sanctions on Iraq to continue so long as it is still a threat: Britain
AMMAN, Jan 15 (AFP) - The 10th anniversary of the Gulf war
should be a reminder of the "necessity" to keep sanctions on
Iraq until it is no longer a threat, British Foreign Office Minister
Peter Hain said Monday.
Hain, in a statement released by the British embassy in Amman,
also called on Baghdad to cooperate in tracing some 600
Kuwaitis listed as missing since Iraq invaded the tiny Gulf
emirate in August 1990.
"Since the Gulf War, our policy has contained the threat posed by
the Iraqi regime," of President Saddam Hussein, Hain said in a
statement released on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the war
that started January 16, 1991.
"In the last 10 years Iraq has not used chemical weapons
against the Kurds or Iran or invaded its neighbours. Nor has it
fired Scud missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia," he said.
"Before the (UN-imposed) sanctions, Iraq did all of these," Hain
added.
"That is why Britain will continue to support sanctions and the
'no-fly zones' until Iraq no longer represents a threat. This
anniversary should be a reminder to all of us why it is as
necessary to contain the Iraqi threat now as it was 10 years ago,"
Hain said.
The British official stressed however that his country "wants to
see sanctions suspended", and said they could be lifted if Iraq
allowed UN weapons inspectors to "control Saddam's
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons capabilities, which
are threatening the region."
__________________________________________________
British MP aims to organise anti-sanctions boat trip to Iraq
BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (AFP) - British MP and anti-sanctions
campaigner George Galloway said here Monday that he plans to
organise a boat trip between London and the Iraqi port city of
Basra in solidarity with Baghdad.
The boat is to leave from the Thames River near Big Ben and
Houses of Parliament and stop off in Alexandria, Egypt, before
passing through the Suez Canal and calling in on several Gulf
ports, including Kuwait if possible, he told a press conference.
The voyage could set off in May, Galloway said.
He said the aim would be to stir public opinion against the
decade-old sanctions and the use of depleted uranium
munitions against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.
Galloway, a member of the governing Labour party but who is at
odds with London's hard line on Iraq, sent a consignment of
humanitarian aid overland in March 2000 after Britain's Foreign
Office refused to authorise a Baghdad flight.
In a statement issued Monday for the 10th anniversary of the Gulf
War, Foreign Office minister Peter Hain stressed the "necessity"
to keep sanctions on Iraq until it no longer posed a threat.
"Since the Gulf War, our policy has contained the threat posed by
the Iraqi regime," he said.
"Britain will continue to support sanctions and the 'no-fly zones'
until Iraq no longer represents a threat. This anniversary should
be a reminder to all of us why it is as necessary to contain the
Iraqi threat now as it was 10 years ago." Iraq has been under
crippling UN sanctions ever since its August 1990 invasion of
Kuwait.
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________
KOMINFORM
P.O. Box 66
00841 Helsinki
Phone +358-40-7177941
Fax +358-9-7591081
http://www.kominf.pp.fi
General class struggle news:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Geopolitical news:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
__________________________________________________
