The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
[Main archive index/search] [List information] [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]
Section Seven -------------- (1)Iraq's Aziz meets UN who quit over sanctions. BAGHDAD, March 27 (Reuters) (2) Barbara Crossette and Iraq: Here She Goes Again by Gilles d'Aymery (includes commentary by Drew Hamre :) (3)3/28 - IRAQ'S MISSILE PROGRAM HAS BEEN SET BACK 2 YEARS WASHINGTON [MENL] (4) U.S. places more holds even as it announces releasing UNITED NATIONS (AP) March 27 (5) US unblocks some Iraq contracts; $1.67 billion held. March 27 (Reuters) (6)Kuwaiti minister wants U.N. envoy to visit Iraq. March 27 (Reuters) (7)U.N. aid chief warns sanctions creating "lost generation” in Iraq. March 28. (AFP) (8) Sanctions 'hitting Iraqi youth': Mr Von Sponeck says an entire generation has been destroyed March 27. BBC News. =================== http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000327_2401.html :03/27/2000 12:24:00 ET Iraq's Aziz meets UN who quit over sanctions BAGHDAD, March 27 (Reuters) - Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz met on Monday the U.N. relief coordinator in Iraq who is quitting in protest at the plight of sanctions-battered Iraqis, the Iraqi News Agency reported. INA said Aziz met Hans von Sponeck, the senior U.N. official in Iraq, and discussed "views on the humanitarian programme in Iraq." It said Aziz "appreciated the efforts of Mr Sponeck during the period he spent in Iraq and his objective stances which he expressed during number of occasions." President Saddam Hussein met Sponeck, a German career U.N. official, on Sunday. He was the first Iraq-based U.N. official to meet the president since the 1991 Gulf War. Sponeck announced in February that he would leave his post on March 31 after criticising what he called the failure of the U.N. oil-for-food programme which is intended to offset the privations imposed on Iraqis by post-Gulf War sanctions. Jutta Burghardt, another German U.N. official who headed the World Food Programme in Iraq, also announced her resignation in February on similar grounds. Iraq has been under punishing U.N. sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which was reversed by a U.S.-led multinational force in the Gulf War. The sanctions can be eased only when Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been accounted for and scrapped. But U.N. arms inspectors have not been allowed back into the country for more than a year. =================== Barbara Crossette and Iraq: Here She Goes Again by Gilles d'Aymery "Can a single reporter warp the perceptions of a nation?" asks Swans' contributor, Drew Hamre. Hamre continues: "The New York Times coverage of Iraq is chiefly in the hands of their UN reporter, Barbara Crossette. And The New York Times is, in turn, one of only four mainstream outlets that regularly covers this beat (AP, Reuters, and the Washington Post being the others). Given the deserved stature of The Times, and its vast reach through the syndicated market, the damage caused by Ms. Crossette's repeated transgressions against transparency, fairness, and simple honesty are incalculable." "Following is an indictment of Ms. Crossette by the press watch organization, FAIR, in an outstanding report by Seth Ackerman:" "New York Times on Iraq Sanctions -- A case of journalistic malpractice http://www.fair.org/extra/0003/crossette-iraq.html [Note: This report is very much worth reading.] So, what is Barbara Crossette up to this time? Crossette did not have much time for Kosovo this week, not out of disinterest in the matter but out of one of the most cherished causes of The New York Times, Iraq and the toppling of the Iraqi regime. First, on March 23, she wrote 2,000 words to explain, in Expert Says Iraq Got Bomb Data From U.S., that Iraqi students may have "combed U.S. libraries for bomb-building information and Iraqi agents and scientists collected valuable data at American scientific conferences." Darn, you would think that only the Serbs can rival with Iraqi's duplicity! Suffice it to say, an "expert" said it. And the expert is one Khidhir Hamza, a man who "held several high-level jobs in Iraq before his defection in 1995." That the article is filled with innuendoes is unimportant. What counts is the headline....Iraq Got Bomb... To make sure that the reader gets the drift, William Safire comes to the rescue in an Op-Ed of the same day, Saddam's Sudan? There is a story going around people in-the-know that suggests "North Korea offered to sell the government of Sudan an entire factory for assembling scud missiles." Problem is, Sudan is broke. Not a problem, people in-the-know suggest, as analyzed by Safire, Iraq will finance the venture. So, here we go, with all the bad guys on stage. Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and the Chinese-Russian-French "cabal" (the French again, can't love them, can't hate them!) are conspiring to destroy the free world, that is the good old United States of America. Safire gets to no specific conclusion but he need not reach one. The readers will. They skim over Barbara Crossette's headline and got to Saddam's Sudan? Intrigued, they read the piece of conspiracy babble. Don't you always read William Safire's columns anyway? I do - this is Safire after all. Suggestion is enough. Enough for what? Barbara Crossette provides the beginning of an answer the next day, March 24, in Smuggling of Iraqi Oil Is Rising, U.N. is told. To help the reader understand, the subhead reads, Iranian help is seen as sanctions are violated. And, if the reader is not yet convinced, an article by Elaine Sciolino, a new character in The Times' play, expands on Iraq Builds Base for Rebels fighting Iran, U.S. Contends. And it adds, in a subhead, Oil smuggling gives Baghdad money for terrorism, U.S. says. These two articles are quite instructive as they demonstrate the work of the U.S. administration on both fronts, that of Iraq and of Iran, trying to play one against the other. Iraq appears to have increased the amount of oil it smuggles, mainly through Iranian waters. The small quantity of smuggled oil is not a hindrance for an oil market that could use more production so that American consumers stop whining about the price of gasoline and heating oil. The problem is that the smuggled oil brings revenues to the Iraqi government outside the control of the U.N. which has dictated for the past ten years how much oil Iraq can produce and the allocation of the proceeds. It's been called the "oil for food" program, though it's a misnomer. Essentially, the U.N. confiscates a substantial portion of the proceeds for its own surveillance programs against Iraq and for financing the so-called reparations for Kuwaiti private properties that were destroyed during the Gulf war. So Iraq pays for the people that regulate Iraq, the very people controlling what Iraq can import, the type of food and medicine it needs, etc.. It's a very ingenious and Orwellian system. So, when Iraq smuggles oil by trucks to Iran, Turkey and Jordan, and by small tankers through Iranian waters, it tries to loosen the strangling knot placed by the International Community around its sovereign neck. Having once worked in the oil business I would not be surprised if the Iraqis and the Iranians were using a more sophisticated scheme known as swaps. In that instance, Iraqi oil is sent to Iran for Iranian domestic consumption and the equivalent in Iranian oil is sold entirely legally on the international market. Iran gets a swapping fee of say $5.00 a barrel and Iraq pockets the difference. This is really what the U.S. Administration and its allies are desperately trying to foil, as these proceeds have helped the Iraqi regime to survive the most drastic and debilitating sanctions ever put in place against a single country by the International Community. Then, one can understand the article written by Elaine Sciolino, the zest of it being, how can we drive a wedge between Iraq and Iran? After all, as a senior official of the administration is quoted as saying: "This is a propaganda campaign." But that's not the only reason for Barbara Crossette to write so profusely with the assistance of Safire's conspiratorial rat-a-tat-tat. She is back the next day, March 25 - that is for the third day in a row. In Annan Exhorts U.N. Council on 'Oil for Food' Program, she describes the predicament faced by the proponents of the Iraqi asphyxia until the end of time or the toppling of the Iraqi regime, whichever comes first. According to Crossette, U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan told the members of the Security Council that "The humanitarian situation in Iraq poses a serious moral dilemma for this organization." Annan: "The United Nations has always been on the side of the vulnerable and the weak, and has always sought to relieve suffering, yet here we are accused of causing suffering to an entire population." Annan again: "We are in danger of losing the argument, or the propaganda war - if we haven't already lost it - about who is responsible for this situation, President Hussein or the United Nations." And the U.S. administration is scrambling to put together a newly "improved" package to put a more human face on the "oil for food" program. And this is the second reason why Barbara Crossette is once again so actively using her undeniable talent to write about Iraq and its wicked regime, the very real Security Council meeting this coming week that will decide once more to prolong the sanctions that are slowly and surreptitiously (being far away from the cameras' eyes) exterminating the Iraqi people. Maybe one day Barbara Walters will ask Ms. Crossette, "Is it worth it?" And Ms. Crossette will consult with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for the proper answer. Note 1 - Read our February 25 article on the same subject, The Business of Manipulation, From Baghdad to Belgrade. Note 2 - Have you asked yourselves why the price of oil increased so suddenly? This should be the object of a full commentary. But really, why did Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Mexico (non-OPEC member), all U.S. Client states, lead the charge to curtail production? Why did even Norway go along? And why now, when the price had already gone over $20.00 a barrel and not when the price was languishing at $11.00 a barrel? Perhaps you could turn your attention to a region that has gone back below the radar screen, namely, the Caucasus. Does the Baku, Azerbaijan - Cehlan, Turkey pipeline ring a bell? Just think of it. I wish William Safire would focus his conspiracy babble on that very fine subject! ==================================== 3/28 IRAQ'S MISSILE PROGRAM HAS BEEN SET BACK 2 YEARS WASHINGTON [MENL] The United States believes that allied air strikes against Iraq have set back Baghdad's missile program by two years. U.S. officials said that allied air attacks by U.S. and British warplanes enforcing a no-fly zone in northern and southern Iraq have hampered Baghdad's efforts to exploit the absence of United Nations weapons inspectors. UN inspectors have not conducted work in Baghdad for nearly 18 months while Iraq has tried to restore its intermediate-range missile program. Clinton administration officials said the allied air strikes will be more effective than the return of any weak UN inspections regime in stopping Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction program. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has opposed the resumption of UN inspections. "We believe we set Iraq's ballistic missile programs back by one to two years, degraded the infrastructure that Saddam used to conceal WMD programs >from international exposure, and reduced the regime's ability to exercise effective command and control over its forces," Alina L. Romanowski, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, said. =========== http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20000327_1516.html 03/27/2000 20:28:00 ET U.S. places more holds even as it announces releasing UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ Even as the United States announced it was allowing $100 million in equipment to go to Iraq through the U.N. humanitarian program, Washington tied up $7.6 million in new goods, U.N. figures showed Monday. The figures also showed that most of the equipment that Washington released on Friday included cranes, forklift trucks, car batteries and refrigeration equipment. The United States has tied up over $1 billion worth of goods in the U.N. sanctions committee arguing that it wants to make sure it cannot be used for military purposes. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and nearly every Security Council ambassador urged Washington to release the contracts at an open meeting of the Security Council on Friday so the equipment can repair Iraq's decayed electric, water, sanitation and oil infrastructure. Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham announced at that meeting that Washington was releasing 70 contracts worth over $100 million and was conducting a review to see if there were ways to speed up its approval for contracts. The United States is also sponsoring a resolution to double the amount of spare parts Iraq can buy through the program that is expected to be approved this week. But at the same time, Washington put on hold another seven contracts worth $7.6 million, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Monday, citing figures from the U.N. oil-for-food program. The U.N. humanitarian program allows Iraq to sell its oil to buy humanitarian goods and equipment to repair its oil sector. ============ http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000327_2719.html 03/27/2000 13:55:00 ET US unblocks some Iraq contracts; $1.67 billion held UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States, as promised, has lifted objections to $111 million worth of contracts for Iraq but is still holding up $1.67 billion in supplies for Baghdad, the United Nations said Monday. Among those released were 26 contracts worth $15 million for oil spare parts and equipment. Most of the remainder were for supplies in the humanitarian sector, said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. James Cunningham, the deputy U.S. permanent representative, announced Friday that Washington would unblock more than $100 million worth of contracts as part of its overall review of supplies reaching Iraq under a U.N. humanitarian program. But Eckhard said the United States had frozen another seven contracts on Friday worth $7.6 million for a total of $1.67 billion in blocked contracts. This was the first time the United Nations had released precise figures on contracts Washington has frozen. Britain runs a distant second place in putting about $140 million worth of contracts "on hold," diplomats said. Some of them overlap with those the United States has frozen. At a Friday Security Council debate on Iraq, both friends and foes of the United States criticized the large number of contracts Washington had frozen, calling them "unacceptable" and "intolerable" and a danger to the humanitarian program. According to a December council resolution on Iraq, lists are being drawn up of foodstuffs and some agricultural supplies that can be expedited to Baghdad after checks by U.N. officials and without agreement by Security Council members. But some of the U.S.-blocked contracts will not be on the list and are for infrastructure repairs for Iraq's aging electricity and water industries, U.S. officials said. The United States is also sponsoring a resolution that may be adopted Tuesday and will allow Iraq to double the annual monies it can spend on oil field equipment from $600 million to $1.2 billion. But U.S. officials said they would still block spare parts that might be used to further oil smuggling, which they say could reach $800 million this year. Iraq has been barred from selling oil on the open market since sweeping U.N. sanctions were imposed after its troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Most of its oil revenues are placed in a U.N. escrow account, which pays suppliers of goods Baghdad has ordered. More than $6.7 billion worth of goods have arrived in Iraq since the U.N. oil-for-food program began in December 1996 to ease the impact of the sanctions. The embargoes cannot be suspended until Iraq has accounted for its weapons of mass destruction programs. ============ 03/27/2000 15:54:00 ET Kuwaiti minister wants U.N. envoy to visit Iraq UNITED NATIONS, March 27 (Reuters) - Kuwaiti deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Sheikhh Salem al-Sabah said on Monday he hoped the U.N. coordinator for missing Kuwaitis, retired Russian diplomat Yuli Vorontsov, would be able to visit Iraq. Speaking to reporters after seeing Security Council president Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh, he said he would also see Vorontsov to "put him in the picture." "We advise strongly that he should visit Kuwait and other places, Iraq included," he said. Vorontsov was Moscow's representative to the United Nations from 1990 to 1994, including the period of the Gulf war, and later served as ambassador to Washington until early 1999. He was appointed in February to the new post of U.N. coordinator for the return of some 600 Kuwaitis and people of other nationalities missing since Iraq's 1990 occupation of the emirate. Sheikhh Salem said he did not know when Vorontsov might go to Baghdad, "but we wish he will go to Iraq and Iraq would receive him," even though it had called him "a puppet of America." Vorontsov's post as U.N. coordinator for missing Kuwaitis and Kuwaiti property was established under a Security Council adopted in December 1999 that also set up a new agency, called the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), to complete the scrapping of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. U.N. weapons inspectors have not been allowed back into Iraq since mid-December 1998, when they were withdrawn in advance of air strikes by the United States and Britain for failing to cooperate with the U.N. arms teams. ============ 3/28 http://www.accessme.com/jordantimes/Tue/news/news6.htm U.N. aid chief warns sanctions creating "lost generation” in Iraq BAGHDAD (AFP) — The international community is condemning an entire generation of young Iraqis to a bleak and dangerous future under sanctions, outgoing U.N. humanitarian aid chief Hans von Sponeck warned on Monday. “I am very angry that it takes such a long time for failed policy to be rectified,” said the German diplomat who has resigned in protest at the sanctions in force since Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. “You can talk about an embargo generation, a generation of the refrigerator, you can talk about a lost generation,” he said in an interview with AFP. “The schools you go to show an appalling picture.” Von Sponeck, who is to leave his post on Wednesday, said the school drop-out rate had reached between 15 and 20 per cent, compared to almost zero before the embargo. The literacy rate has also slumped from 90 to 66 per cent, said von Sponeck, who paid a farewell call on President Saddam Hussein on Sunday. “The international community is playing a very dangerous game,” said the veteran U.N. diplomat, warning of the damage to Iraq's children and their future outlook on the world. “It could translate into an anti-Western mentality, it could translate into violence within Iraq, it could have all kinds of negative implications,” he said. The 60-year-old German stressed that ordinary Iraqis were paying the price for the battle of wills between Saddam and Washington, the strongest opponent of an end to the sanctions. “If then somebody comes and says the president is building palaces and a lot of money goes into this, this is regrettable, no one here can force him to change. Is that justification to continue depriving the young from their rights?” he said. Von Sponeck also dismissed charges by the United States, which had called for his resignation, of having turned soft on the Iraqi regime. “I am not a `useful idiot' for the Iraqis. I have my own position, my own concerns, I do not always see eye-to-eye with the Iraqis. On the education budget, for example, I negotiated hard to increase the funding.” =========== http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_692000/692881.stm Monday, 27 March, 2000, 22:59 GMT 23:59 UK Sanctions 'hitting Iraqi youth' Mr Von Sponeck says an entire generation has been destroyed The departing United Nations relief co-ordinator for Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, says UN sanctions are condemning a whole generation of young Iraqis to a bleak and dangerous future. The German diplomat resigned last month in protest against the policy which was introduced after the Gulf War. Mr von Sponeck said he had given up hope of helping Iraqis And he says the West shares responsibility with the Iraqi Government for a humanitarian tragedy. In an exclusive report from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on the price people are paying for Saddam Hussein's leadership and sanctions regime, the BBC's Middle East correspondent Jeremy Bowen spoke to Mr von Sponeck. Mr von Sponeck, who has been with the UN for 32 years, says he is resigning as its humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq because he believes sanctions are inhumane and ineffective. He says allowing Iraq to sell oil for food and drugs is not enough. "For one thing, there isn't enough money," Mr von Sponeck told the BBC. Sanctions timeline 1990: Sanctions imposed on Iraq 1996: Iraq allowed to sell a limited amount of oil 1998: Iraq refuses to cooperate with weapons inspectors 1998-1999: US and UK launch bombing raids "Even with the much-improved revenue that is available now, $2.9bn for six months for a population of 23 million translates into $252 per person per six months. That isn't enough." Mr Von Sponeck also blames the UN sanctions committee for holding up too much aid on the grounds that it might be used for making weapons of mass destruction. At the moment 20% of the goods ordered are on hold. He says the West shares the blame for the destruction of an entire Iraqi generation. That is the most formidable accusation against a sanction regime of this kind - that you have put a generation and more into a refrigerator," he said. Blunt instrument "I have said before, you have frozen their capacities. You haven't allowed them to develop. So, for them, it's too late." Mr von Sponeck is scheduled to leave Iraq on Wednesday. Other critics of the sanctions says they have created an 'Alice in Wonderland' economy, in which a small class of people live well in Baghdad's smart suburbs, making money by trading smuggled goods, while the vast majority suffer. Children are dying from diseases such as leukaemia because hospitals are unable to provide adequate treatment. Iraq, however, used to have Western standards of health care. The UN childrens' agency Unicef says half a million Iraqi children have died in the decade since sanctions were imposed. According to our correspondent, attempts are being made to come up with sanctions that target the government rather than the people. But he says for the foreseeable future, sanctions are going to remain a blunt instrument. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi