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I sent the following letter to The Guardian: Dear Sir/Madam: On BBC 2’s Newsnight yesterday (22 September), the programme’s diplomatic editor Mark Urban repeated the Foreign Office claim that UNICEF has shown that low child mortality rates in the north of Iraq (controlled by the UN) and high rates in the centre and south (controlled by Baghdad) are due to Iraq ‘ sacrificing its own people for propaganda’. However, UNICEF explicitly rejects this: ‘the difference .... cannot be attributed to the differing ways the Oil-for-Food Program is implemented’. It explains the contrast as follows: sanctions have been more easy to evade in the north, agriculture is easier there, and aid began arriving in the north in 1991 whereas it began to arrive in the rest of the country only in 1997, and in large quantities only from the spring of 1998. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Please do not send emails with attached files to the list *** Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html ***