POLITICS-IRAQ: Security Council Powers Fail to Break Impasse

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 1999 (IPS) - The five veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council called Thursday for a “new way forward” to deal with Iraq but failed to agree on any concrete policy steps to achieve that goal.

The failure by the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States to agree to any joint measures on Iraq – after days of high-level diplomatic contacts – was a sign of the lingering bitterness since a December attack on Iraq by US and British forces, diplomats said.

Nevertheless the five foreign ministers, after a luncheon with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, did agree that a “comprehensive resolution” on Iraqi disarmament and humanitarian needs must be adopted “as soon as possible.”

Beyond that statement – which in effect has been the policy of the 15-nation Security Council since it began a “comprehensive review” of Iraq policy in April – the five governments still differed on how to deal with Baghdad.

The United States and Britain favoured a Security Council draft resolution which would suspend export sanctions on Iraq, but only if Baghdad allowed a resumption of UN arms inspections while still being subject to an imports embargo. The Iraqi government rejected that proposal months ago.

France, Russia and China, on the other hand, insisted that the nine-year-old UN embargo on Iraq should be suspended and contended that UN weapons monitors had already accomplished most of their disarmament tasks.

“Positions have moved closer, but we have not reached an identical approach,” French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said Thursday.

The governments were no closer to adopting any significant joint text, as diplomats had hoped. Plans for a meeting on revitalising the Council approach to Iraq were dropped earlier this week, and several officials – including US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright – left the luncheon Thursday with little or no comment.

Albright did confess she was confused after her Chinese counterpart, Tang Jiaxuan, told reporters that Beijing did not accept the US explanation of its bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, in which three people died.

“We are telling the truth,” Albright said after Tang demanded a new explanation for the bombing, which US officials have said resulted from faulty information about the embassy’s location.

Between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation offensive against Yugoslavia this spring, the December strikes on Iraq and the continuing sanctions there, the bitter sentiments against the five permanent Council members appeared to have blocked unity on many issues.

The latest lukewarm statement by the five nations came as the Iraqi government released a statement accusing the US and British governments of a “policy of genocide against the people of Iraq.”

The two governments, Iraq argued, had placed a hold on 328 contracts, worth 438 million dollars, for humanitarian goods which Baghdad was allowed to purchase under a special “oil-for-food” exemption to the sanctions.

Sharif Ali Bin al-Hussein, a leader of the Centrist Democratic Movement, an Iraqi opposition movement based in London, blamed President Saddam Hussein’s regime for the suffering caused by sanctions.

He contended that child mortality rates had doubled in areas where the Iraqi government controls aid distribution, but had decreased in the northern Kurdish zones where the United Nations monitors distribution.

Ahmed Chalabi, a leader of the Iraqi National Congress, another opposition group, said that “a system in which the United Nations is more intrusive in determining the purchase of food and medicine,” as in northern Iraq, should be used for all Iraq.

But he urged that sanctions be maintained against the Iraqi government.

Iraqi opposition figures have conducted meetings with diplomats here this week, in their latest effort to build up support for Hussein’s overthrow – a goal which Washington has in recent years openly embraced.

Albright, who met the opposition leaders earlier this week, said that she hoped “other free countries will join in supporting the Iraqi people in recovering the country and setting it back in its rightful place among civilised nations.”

Suspicions that the United States was seeking Saddam Hussein’s ouster also complicated the Security Council debate, since some statements from Washington indicated that it would not consider an end to the embargo as long as Hussein remained in power.

Russia, China and France insisted on a concrete timetable for the lifting of sanctions – which the United States has so far refused to consider.