_________________________________________________ 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] __________________________________________________ Subject: IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 194 Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:09:40 -0500 IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 194 Tuesday, January 23 2001 The Monitor is produced daily on weekdays by the Mariam Appeal www.mariamappeal.com _______________________________________________________________ Bush faces Saddam weapons challenge >From THE TIMES, January 23rd, 2001 The Bush Administration came under pressure yesterday to take action against Iraq after intelligence reports suggested that President Saddam Hussein has rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons factories. On his first day in office, Mr Bush was confronted with a challenge from his father's old adversary, suspected by Britain and the United States of trying to rearm itself with weapons of mass destruction. Under Anglo-American policy, any attempt by Iraq to produce nuclear, biological or chemical weapons would lead to military action. In his inauguration speech, Mr Bush pledged to confront weapons of mass destruction and, although he did not name Iraq, it was clear that he had Baghdad in mind. Last week he said that he would be prepared to attack Iraq if weapons of mass destruction were being developed there. An industrial complex in Falluja, a town west of Baghdad, may provide the pretext for military action, according to The New York Times. Factories at the site were monitored by the United Nations weapons inspectors, who were forced to leave Iraq in 1998. The site was then attacked by American and British aircraft in Operation Desert Fox. Two of the factories have been rebuilt and another has resumed production. The three are "dual use", meaning that they have civilian and military capabilities. One factory produces chlorine, which has commercial applications but can be used in poison gas; another makes castor oil for brake fluid but can also produce the biological toxin ricin. "Our information tallies with the American assessment," a British official said. "We are very suspicious about these factories, but we do not have proof that they are making weapons of mass destruction. That is why we want weapons inspectors back on the ground to investigate." An American expert on the Middle East said that if President Bush acts against Iraq "it will not be a pinprick, it will be strong and decisive". Washington, however, no longer has the international support for action against Iraq that it could once count upon. France and Russia are seeking an end to sanctions against the country and are likely to receive oil contracts when the embargo is lifted. The Arab world has been angered by support for the sanctions by Western countries and their failure to intervene to end the recent violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr Bush may have no option but to act if he wants to contain Saddam. On New Year's Eve the Iraqi Armed Forces paraded several hundred tanks and 60 helicopters, which have been refitted since the Gulf War. American and British jets attacked targets yesterday in the south and north of Iraq, an Iraqi military spokesman said. No casualties were reported. The aircraft, which took off from Kuwait and Turkey, were patrolling no-fly zones set up after the Gulf War. ______________________________________________________________________ BP and Exxon buying Iraqi crude >From THE TIMES, January 23rd, 2001 BP AND Exxon Mobil are buying cargoes of Iraqi crude oil in a move that may indicate a weakening of Western resolve over sanctions against the Iraqi state. The decision by BP and Exxon to resume purchases of Iraqi crude has caused astonishment among rival oil companies, which continue to boycott Iraqi crude, fearing that cargoes may be tainted by kickbacks to the Iraqi regime. Official oil sales under the UN oil-for-food programme collapsed from 2.1 million barrels per day to just 600,000 bpd in December after Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) demanded surcharges of 40 cents per barrel, to be paid directly to Iraqi bank accounts. The UN programme was designed to provide funds to purchase essential food and medicine for the Iraqi people and payments are supposed to be made exclusively into a UN escrow account. Since then buyers of Iraqi crude have been dominated by Russian companies and obscure traders. These include Italtech from Italy, Belmetalenergo, a company from Belarus, and Fenar from Lichtenstein. These buyers will almost certainly sell on the cargoes before the oil reaches a refinery. BP said it did not deal directly with SOMO but had bought a cargo from "a reputable trader", "because the market is tight and it was available". A BP spokesman said it had received contractual assurances from the seller that the cargo complied with UN rules and would not have done so without assurances. A spokeswoman for Exxon confirmed that it had bought cargoes of Iraqi crude. "They did not come directly from Iraq. We are extremely stringent in following UN and US guidelines on this issue," she said. Other oil companies, including Shell and TotalFina Elf, are continuing to avoid Iraqi oil. According to MEES, the respected Middle East economic journal, the Iraqi authorities are sticking to their demands for surcharges, having decided to "institutionalise" the practice. Privately, some oil traders say that the UN programme has lost credibility because the organisation is not checking up on the buyers. "Everyone and his dog is trading Iraqi oil," one trader said. A Shell spokesman said the company had not bought Iraqi crude since the beginning of December: "We want an assurance from the Iraqis that their pricing policy is in line with UN rules. We have yet to receive that." Iraq first demanded a surcharge last November. The issue came to a head in December when the UN Office of the Iraqi Programme refused to approve Iraq's price formula because it was too far below the market level. However, the UN eventually agreed to a 30 cent per barrel "discount" from the market price. In a separate development, the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister yesterday endorsed a front-page editorial in a Kuwaiti newspaper calling for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq. Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said that it was the Iraqi regime which did not want the removal of the embargo. ______________________________________________________________________ __ Syria Has Opened a Pipeline for Iraqi Oil, Observers Say Mideast: Smuggling may provide Baghdad with $2 million a day and be Bush administration's first foreign policy challenge. >From LOS ANGELES TIMES, January 23rd, 2001 In a major test for the Bush administration's new foreign policy team, Syria has opened a key pipeline to Baghdad's oil, a scheme that generates at least $2 million daily in illicit funds for the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to senior U.S. officials, Mideast diplomats and oil experts. The smuggling operation, launched in mid-November, is now the largest source of independent income for Baghdad, according to oil experts. It also represents one of the most flagrant violations yet of U.N. sanctions imposed because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. On a broader level, the operation reflects ambitious political agendas in both Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials and Mideast diplomats say. By offering oil price discounts of up to 50%, Iraq is trying to lure neighboring countries such as Syria into secret pacts that would create a long-term economic dependency. "This allows Saddam to expand his influence in the region in pernicious ways," said a senior U.S. official. "Poorer countries get hooked on lower oil prices at a time they need help economically." Illegal oil shipments are already flowing by land through Turkey and Jordan and via Iran's sea lanes, but they are "nickel-and-dime operations" compared with the Syrian route, the official said. The operations to Turkey and Iran are slow, logistically difficult and costly due to transfers on both land and sea and heavy bribery along the way, on top of price discounts, U.S., Mideast and oil sources say. The 552-mile Syrian pipeline, which runs from Iraq's northern Kirkuk oil fields to the Mediterranean port of Baniyas, is much more cost- efficient, thus allowing Iraq to pocket higher profits, oil analysts say. Hussein's plans have now lured to his side two of the most important countries that participated in Operation Desert Storm a decade ago. Syria dispatched troops and Turkey still provides a base for U.S. warplanes. But the illicit oil shipments have continued for so long and reached such volume that the Turks recently built a terminal on the other side of the border to receive the oil trucks, oil analysts say. "These are important elements in Iraq's effort to erode and ultimately bring about the collapse of U.N. sanctions, particularly U.N. control of Iraq's oil revenues," said James A. Placke, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq now with Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Saddam wants to get his hands on the money to show that U.N. oversight isn't working and isn't worth the effort." The new Syrian operation is already carrying about 150,000 barrels per day, producing income that goes straight into Hussein's pockets rather than to the United Nations "oil for food" program, the sources report. The capacity of this section of the pipeline is 200,000 barrels per day, which, if fully used, could produce at least an additional $500,000 a day for Iraq. But there are questions about whether the pipeline, which was damaged during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, can transport at full capacity. To cover the Iraqi origins of the oil, Syria has begun using much of the Iraqi oil for domestic consumption and exporting more of its own, oil analysts say. Besides getting cheaper oil--a boon to its troubled economy--Syria has its own political motive, related to the Arab-Israeli peace process. U.S. officials and Mideast diplomats believe that authorities in Damascus, the Syrian capital, want to send a message to the outside world, particularly the United States, about abiding by U.N. resolutions: Syria shouldn't be expected to comply with sanctions on Iraq while the world is doing little about an earlier resolution that calls for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. The new smuggling operation was detected after an unusual increase in Syrian exports. When pressed by the United States and the United Nations, Damascus claimed that it was simply getting the pipeline ready for eventual export, U.S. and U.N. officials say. Baghdad and Damascus signed a memorandum of understanding in 1998 to reopen the pipeline, which was closed in 1982 because of disputes between the two, but like other agreements Iraq has signed with European and Asian countries, it was not to take effect until after U.N. sanctions were lifted. The Clinton administration condemned the agreement at the time and warned Damascus that use of the pipeline would be a major violation of U.N. sanctions. After Syria opened the pipeline, the Clinton administration approached Damascus about getting U.N. approval for its use under the oil-for-food program, U.S. officials say. That program allows Iraq to export oil, but all income is channeled through the United Nations and can be spent only on approved humanitarian supplies, reparations for Kuwait and aid to the Kurds in northern Iraq. The joint Syrian-Iraqi sanctions-busting operation is particularly odd because of deep animosity between the longtime rivals. Two decades ago, Baghdad was linked to an assassination attempt against the late Syrian President Hafez Assad. Diplomatic relations were finally severed and the pipeline shut down in 1982. Assad died last June and was succeeded by his son, Bashar. U.S. officials are concerned that the new income, which could top $700 million this year, may contribute to Iraq's efforts to rebuild and expand both its conventional military capability and weapons of mass destruction, which are no longer under U.N. supervision since the departure of U.N. weapons inspectors and U.S. and British bombing raids in 1998. During the past two years, the United States has monitored Iraq's steady efforts to rebuild many factories involved in dual-use materials that are critical to commercial products as well as chemical and biological weapons. In a report released Jan. 10, the Pentagon concluded that key facilities are now completed, although it has no hard evidence yet to prove that the plants west of Baghdad are actually producing the world's deadliest weapons, U.S. officials said Monday. The Bush administration has pledged to hold Iraq to its commitments-- and to hold firm on sanctions until it does. "It's quite clear from Secretary [Colin L.] Powell's testimony [at his Senate confirmation hearing], from the statements that President Bush has made, that there will be a lot of attention to this matter, that Iraq will be held to its international obligations, and that we will work with our allies to re-energize the sanctions," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday. But so far, neither the United States nor the United Nations has been able to convince Turkey, Jordan or Iran. And Syria may be a hard sell as well in light of serious economic problems, including large foreign debt, falling exports, low investment, an overvalued currency and a foreign currency shortage--all at a time when its population is rising at about 4% per year, according to the U.S. _________________________________________________________________ UN team to visit Iraq for talks on financing oil industry BAGHDAD, Jan 23 (AFP) - A UN technical team will visit Baghdad in mid- February for talks on how to manage 600 million euros (564 million dollars) allocated for the rehabilitation of Iraq's oil industry, Oil Minister Amer Rashid was quoted as saying Tuesday. Quoted by Al-Jumhuriya newspaper, Rashid said his ministry would show the UN mission "projects to finance locally so as to favour free management of funds allocated for the development of our oil industry." Whilst extending the latest six-month stage of the oil-for- food programme last month, the UN Security Council agreed to release up to 600 million euros of Iraq's oil income in cash to train and pay maintenance workers in Iraq's dilapidated oil industry. The council asked Annan to ensure the money was not diverted by the Baghdad regime for other purposes. The move would allow President Saddam Hussein's regime to manage for the first time a small part of its oil revenues from the tightly controlled UN account in New York. Rashid did not mention training or pay but said Iraq had "some future projects for enlarging and developing its export terminals." Among these projects were maintenance on the oil pipelines linking Iraq to Turkey and Syria as well as the construction of another pipeline between Iraq and Jordan. The only current legal outlets for Iraqi oil sales, which are strictly supervised under UN sanctions imposed after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, are the Gulf port of Mina al-Bakr and the Turkish port of Ceyhan. It has been reported that Syria began to receive Iraqi crude oil on November 20 through a pipeline that had been closed for 18 years, but neither Damascus nor Baghdad have confirmed this. Jordan, which depends on Iraq for all its oil, formed a committee earlier this month tasked with paving the way for the construction of a pipeline to carry Iraqi oil to the kingdom. Iraq's December exports under the UN oil-for-food programme averaged 600, 000 bpd, compared with 2.1 million bpd in November and 2.36 million bpd in October, the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) reported Monday. Exports in January could be even lower than December, MEES said. Only 548, 000 bpd have been confirmed so far. Current capacity in Iraq is no more than 2.8 million bpd, it said, adding that there was no early expansion in prospect. __________________________________________________________________ Iraq says committee 661 blocks 34 contracts signed with international firms Text of report by Iraqi radio on 22 January A source at the Ministry of Trade has announced that the US and British delegates to Committee 661 have blocked 34 contracts Iraq signed with international firms under the sixth, seventh and eighth stages of the oil-for-food-and-medicine deal. In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency, the source added: The contracts blocked included spare parts for installations of the oil sector, power generation equipment, electrical equipment, cistern trucks, horizontal pumps, threshers, galvanized sheets, sterilization materials, milk, stationery, mobile caravans, digital switchboards, trailers, recovery vehicles, accelerating calibration devices and medical equipment. The source continued: The contracts under which Iraq would have obtained the aforesaid equipment, materials, and spare parts were signed with Algerian, Yemeni, Jordanian, UAE, Lebanese, Philippine, Russian, French, Yugoslav, Italian, Turkish, Swiss, Yemeni, Cypriot, Indian, Austrian and Chinese firms. _________________________________________________________________ Bush Administration Warns Iraq on Weapons Programs >From NEW YORK TIMES, January 23rd, 2001 The Bush administration warned Iraq today to honor its agreements to destroy its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, but the White House said it was too soon to say what steps the new administration would take to ensure Baghdad's compliance. Responding to a report today that Iraq had rebuilt a series of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons, the new White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said, ''The president expects Saddam Hussein to live up to the agreements that he's made with the United Nations, especially regarding the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.'' But when asked how and when the administration would help resume international inspections of suspected weapons sites and factories, Mr.Fleischer said, ''I'm not prepared to address that today, but we will.'' A decade after Mr. Bush's father led a coalition that ousted Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait, Iraq remains one of the most daunting foreign policy problems that former President Bill Clinton has left his successor. Mr. Bush and his national security advisers -- including Gen. Colin L. Powell, now secretary of state, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who both confronted Iraq as top defense officials 10 years ago -- have talked tough about containing President Hussein. But as they enter office, it is not clear whether they have any better options than Mr. Clinton had. International support for tough enforcement of sanctions has waned, while Mr. Hussein has managed to ease his diplomatic isolation, making it difficult to re-energize sanctions, as General Powell has suggested. If Mr. Bush pursues a more aggressive strategy, including military force, the new administration is likely to find few allies, despite evidence that Iraq has resumed covert work on dangerous weapons. As a condition of ending the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Iraq agreed to destroy its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, as well as the production of long-range missiles to deliver to such weapons. But since the middle of 1998, Iraq has barred any meaningful inspections by teams of United Nations experts, who since the end of the gulf war had ferreted out and destroyed large quantities of weapons and uncovered secret programs to create biological and chemical weapons. ''The challenge is larger than a lot of people suspect,'' said Representative Porter Goss, a Florida Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee. ''To say we've lost our eyes and ears in Iraq is true.'' Clearly, constraining Mr. Hussein's weapons programs is at the core of the new administration's policy. ''His only tool, the only thing he can scare us with are those weapons of mass destruction, and we have to hold him to account,'' General Powell said last week. Mr. Bush and his top advisers have vowed to reinvigorate the economic sanctions against Iraq, convince skeptical allies of their value, and somehow spare Iraqi children from bearing the brunt of their effect. ''The most important thing is to maintain the core sanctions, the key sanctions that do make it more difficult and prevent Iraq from rebuilding its weapons programs, particularly its weapons of mass destruction,'' Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, said today. But even some of Mr. Bush's own advisers question this approach. ''Re-energizing sanctions is a mistake,'' said Richard Perle, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Bush during the campaign. ''Ten years later, they're an obvious failure.'' The new administration also supports Iraqi opposition whose goal is to topple Mr. Hussein. The Clinton administration provided only tepid support to the Iraqi opposition. Although President Clinton signed a law in 1998 authorizing $98 million in military aid and equipment, the administration provided very little in the end and explicitly refused to provide any weapons. Under pressure, the Pentagon began providing some direct military training to Iraqi dissidents and opposition leaders in the fall of 1999. Since then, the Pentagon has given courses to 90 members of the Iraqi National Congress -- including 27 at a public affairs seminar in London last summer and 43 who went to a one-week course on war crimes in November at the Defense Institute of International Studies in Newport, R.I. Training continues, but it does not involve combat- related skills. Senior military commanders opposed giving much military aid to the Iraqi groups, warning that they were too weak and fractious to pose a serious threat to Mr. Hussein's rule. The Bush administration would be committed to the opposition's cause, aides say. ''What we have in mind is making it clear to Saddam and the world that we're in favor of seeing this regime change,'' Mr. Perle said. ''We'll support freedom fighters who are prepared to engage in a long-term struggle.'' The Bush administration has not ruled out bombing suspected weapons sites as a last resort. ''If, in fact, Saddam Hussein were taking steps to try to rebuild nuclear capability or weapons of mass destruction, we'd have to give very serious consideration to military action,'' Mr. Cheney said in a debate on Oct. 5. As they departed, Clinton administration officials defended their policies. Walter B. Slocombe, who stepped down last week as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said of Mr. Hussein, ''I don't want to claim he hasn't made progress, but he's still in the box.'' _________________________________________________________________ Disease rising in Iraq due to sanctions -- minister. MOSCOW, January 23 (Itar-Tass) - Iraq's disease rates have increased 20 times since economic sanctions were imposed on Baghdad 10 years ago, visiting Iraqi Health Minister Umeed Madhat Mubarak said on Tuesday. "We still cannot fully define the consequences of American aggression and the use by the U.S. of arms of mass destruction," Mubarak told Itar-Tass. Iraq is having "a sharply rising number of caner patients", especially those affected with blood diseases, he said. Moreover, Iraqi medical science has coined the term "death from malnutrition", he said, adding that due to lack of medicine diseases which were considered conquered, such as cholera, have made a comeback. Iraqi scientists have registered animal mutation, especially in regions in which hostilities had been under way, and plant disease has become widespread, according to him. The situation is difficult, but "we do not stop work, we are trying to find internal resources without hoping for foreign aid," he said. "We have achieved a lot, people hope that the economic embargo will not last for ever," he said. _________________________________________________________________ Iraq now a 'wild card' troubling OPEC: MEES January 22nd, 2001 NICOSIA (AFX) - Iraq's decision to maintain a surcharge on oil exports despite a drop in sales, and the country's lower than expected production rates make it a "wild card" among OPEC members, the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) reported. Iraq is a "wild card which will, more than any other factor, determine what the OPEC 10 need to do on the supply side," MEES said. OPEC's decision earlier this month to cut production by 1.5 mln bpd or 5 pct was based on the assumption that Iraq would return to full production in early February. However, signs are that January exports by Iraq may be even lower than December, with only 548,000 bpd so far confirmed, MEES said. December exports under the UN oil-for-food programme averaged 600,000 bpd, compared with 2.1 million bpd in November and 2.36 million bpd in October. However, Saudi Arabia has said it will adjust production to balance any loss of Iraqi output. MEES said that Iraqi authorities have now set up a new surcharge system, "the clear implication being that it will remain in place over the long haul." It added that "some international oil companies are exploring ways of accommodating the Iraqi demand." Iraq demands that the surcharge be paid outside UN control in an attempt to end sanctions. Iraq's original surcharge of 50 cents per barrel has been dropped to 40 cents, MEES added. _______________________________________________________________ Sanctions Against Iraq Violate Int'l Law: Former U.N. Envoy KUALA LUMPUR, January 22 (Xinhua)--Former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator to Iraq, Hans Van Sponech, Monday described the U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq as ``violations of international law''. The reasons behind the U.N. Security Council's decision on the sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf War in 1990 had since lapsed and could not stand on their own anymore, he said at the forum Promoting a Culture of Peace: The Effect of U.N. Imposed Sanctions here. Van Sponech held the post from 1998 to 2000 before resigning to protest against the 10-year old sanctions. He said it was an immoral and unethical act against the innocent people of Iraq. Providing the audience with statistics during the forum, he said that as a result of the sanctions, 21 percent of Iraqi children suffered from malnutrition while child mortality increased by 196 percent apart from a higher incidence of leukemia. He said that the countries which wanted the continuation of the sanctions had engaged in ``organized lies'' to present a different picture of Iraq to the world community. Also calling for the abolishment of the U.N.-administered ``Oil-for- Food'' program aimed at enabling Iraq to sell its oil to buy basic needs, Van Sponech said the measure was devised earlier only as a temporary solution but now the U.N. was trying to make it permanent by refining and institutionalizing the program. The forum was organized by the Pan Pacific and South East Asia Women's Association of Malaysia. __________________________________________________________________ Iraq reports confrontations with allied warplanes January 22nd, 2001 BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Iraq reported Monday that U.S. and British ``enemy ravens'' bombed civilian buildings in the northern and southern parts of the country. No casualties were reported in the airstrikes, the second since the Saturday inauguration of George W. Bush as president of the United States. In a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency, the Iraqi military said that ``enemy ravens, with direct support from the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia violated our national airspace ... and bombed some of our civil and service installations.'' The statement said there were bombings in both the northern and southern no-fly zones but did not specify exactly where. ``Civil and service installations'' usually refer to government offices responsible for offering public services to the people. On Saturday, Iraq said six people were killed and three injured in airstrikes by U.S. and British warplanes over southern Iraq. It said its air defense units hit one of the aircraft. The U.S. military denied any aircraft was hit, saying all planes returned safely after a raid conducted in response to Iraqi anti- aircraft fire. Allied aircraft patrol the no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq, which were established after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslim rebels from Iraqi government forces in the south and Kurds in the north. Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones and has been challenging allied aircraft since December 1998. _________________________________________________________________ Iraq rebuilt weapons factories NEW YORK, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Iraq has rebuilt several factories the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons, The New York Times reported Monday. The newspaper said the factories include two that were bombed by U.S. and British warplanes two years ago to punish Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. Since air strikes in December of 1998, Iraq has refused to let weapons inspectors into the country. Officials said that without the inspections, the United States did not yet have firm evidence the factories are now producing chemical or biological agents. But a senior officer who closely follows Iraqi affairs and Hussein said, "We don't know for sure, but given his (Hussein) past known behavior, there's probably a pretty fair chance that's what's happening." The Times said the intelligence estimates were mentioned without detail in a report on weapons threats released two weeks ago by the outgoing secretary of defense, William Cohen. The report warned that Iraq had rebuilt its weapons infrastructure, and may have begun producing chemical or biological agents. In his inaugural address Saturday, President Bush did not mention Iraq specifically but vowed to "confront weapons of mass destruction, so that a new century is spared new horrors." In an interview before taking office, he suggested that his administration would not tolerate an Iraq re-armed with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. ________________________________________________________________ Iraq complains to Arab League of US-British `aggression` Text of report by Iraqi radio on 22 January Iraq has reiterated its categorical rejection of the so-called no-fly zones unilaterally enforced by the United States and Britain against the wishes of the international community. In a letter to Arab League Secretary-General Dr Ahmad Ismat Abd-al-Majid, Foreign Minister Muhammad Sa'id al-Sahhaf said that since 1990, the continuing US-UK aggression against Iraq has become a firm policy aimed at undermining Iraq's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and alsoat further hurting the steadfast and mujahid Iraqi people. The foreign minister indicated that the US and UK aircraft taking off from bases on Saudi and Kuwaiti territory conducted 168 combat air sorties during period 1-9 January. One hundred sorties originated on Saudi territory and 68 others originated on Kuwaiti territory, Al-Sahhaf maintained. _____________________________________________________________ Iraqi Foreign Minister To Lead Talk January 22nd, 2001 UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraq's foreign minister will hold talks next month on ending the stalemate over U.N. sanctions and weapons inspections, a spokesman for the world body said Monday. The meetings will take place Feb. 26 and 27, spokesman Fred Eckhard said. He said Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf will travel to U.N. headquarters in New York for the talks with Annan and other senior U.N. officials. U.N. sources disclosed the talks last week but the dates and participants had not previously been confirmed. The meetings were supposed to have begun in January but were put off after Iraq didn't respond in time with ideas for an agenda. The U.N. secretariat has not yet received anything in writing on the contents of the talks, Eckhard said. Iraq is looking to the talks as a step toward ending the sanctions, which were imposed in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Topping the U.N. agenda will be the return of weapons inspectors, barred since they pulled out in late 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes. During a summit in Qatar in November, Annan made clear that he is bound by Security Council resolutions requiring inspectors to report that Iraq has destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before sanctions can be lifted, Eckhard said. Claiming that its weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated, Iraq has demanded that sanctions be lifted immediately. But the United States and other council members insist that without a resumption of inspections, the Security Council cannot make any determination. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
