POLITICS-IRAQ: Farrakhan Against Any Attack on Iraq

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 1998 (IPS) - Louis Farrakhan, leader of the controversial Nation of Islam organisation, Wednesday disputed U.S. President Bill Clinton’s assertion that Washington had the authority it needed to attack Iraq – if necessary.

In a speech at the United Nations, Farrakhan said that if the United States and Britain were to strike at Iraq after that nation had signed a deal with the United Nations last week, the attacking governments would become “outlaw states”.

Farrakhan, who has just completed a 37-nation tour, called on the world body to resist allowing any “inordinate bombing” of Iraq, and to lift the seven-year-old sanctions regime imposed on that nation.

He thanked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his “great effort at keeping the nations away from a catastrophe” by securing a deal with Iraq. That accord, signed in Baghdad by Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, bound Iraq to allowing full access to U.N. weapons inspectors, but provided special procedures for monitoring eight presidential complexes.

“The United Nations can only be an instrument of peace if she refuses to bow to great powers, like America and England,” Farrakhan argued.

The Muslim minister added that, to fulfill its goals, the United Nations would have to push for the end of sanctions not just against Iraq but on Libya as well, and prod the United States to end its own 36-year blockade against Cuba. He visited all three nations during his three-month tour, which ended on Feb. 20.

Farrakhan’s statement came one day after Clinton claimed that a warning to Iraq – issued by the U.N. Security Council this week – that it faced the “severest consequences” if it blocked U.N. weapons inspectors, granted authority for military strikes.

“The government of Iraq should be under no illusion,” Clinton said. “The meaning of ‘severest consequences’ is clear. It provides authority to act if Iraq does not turn the commitment it has now made (to weapons inspections) to compliance.”

The president’s interpretation, however, is not shared by all of the 15 nations on the Security Council. Several governments supported the Council resolution only because it also stated that the U.N. executive body would itself remain “actively seized of the matter in order to ensure implementation of the resolution and to secure peace and security in the area.”

That language, according to many diplomats and legal experts, puts the Security Council, and not the United States, in charge of deciding any further measures if Iraq does not abide by last week’s agreement.

Far from allowing unilateral U.S. attacks, the resolution asserts that “the Security Council, and not an individual country, can decide whether Iraq is in violation of the agreement, and then it is up to the Council to authorise the use of force,” said Jules Lobel, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov argued that the U.N. resolution ensured that “any allusion to ‘automatic’ use of force, which proved to be unacceptable to the majority of the Council’s members, has been ruled out.”

Farrakhan said that Washington and London have pursued a policy of seeking to bomb Iraq which “almost seems insane,” and which could compel them to strike again.

For the Nation of Islam leader – who rose to his greatest prominence following his sponsorship of the ‘Million Man March’ which brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to Washington in 1996 – U.S. antipathy to Iraq is part of a greater fear of Islamic nations.

The theory, first proposed by political scientist Samuel Huntington, of a ‘clash of civilisations’ between Islam and the West, Farrakhan argued, has created a climate in which Muslim governments that disagree with U.S. policies have been targeted for sanctions or military destabilisation. “All Islamic regimes that want to be technologically advanced must be destroyed…this has become policy.”

The Nation of Islam’s theology and black nationalist views – which have been accused by critics as anti-white and anti-Semitic – are not shared by the wider spectrum of Muslim groups in the United States. Still, in recent days, other Islamic organisations shared Farrakhan’s support for a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.

Last week, several major groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council and the Islamic Society of North America, convened in Washington to praise Annan’s diplomatic efforts and urged Clinton to continue to rely on diplomacy and not force.

“Now that the threat of attack has been put off at least for now, it is time to re-examine America’s policy on this issue and on the issue of overall stability and security in the region,” CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said. In particular, he contended, “there should be no bombing of innocent people in Iraq, who have no say in what their government does and does not do.”