UNITED NATIONS: U.S. Admits Sanctions Cause Iraqi Sufferings

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 1996 (IPS) - The United States has acknowledged that U.N. sanctions are causing human suffering in Iraq, but it blames the crisis on the country’s leadership.

“Saddam Hussein does not want to feed his people and he does not give a hoot about them,” U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright told reporters Thursday.

She said that Washington is concerned about the “humanitarian situation” in Iraq.

Two studies sponsored late last year by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation found severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, crippled water supply systems and increased infant mortality throughout the country.

One study said the deadlock between the United Nations and Iraq over various resolutions demonstrates “a continued disregard of the deteriorating health status of the Iraqi people, particularly children. The United Nations humanitarian arm offers palliatives for the alleviation of suffering while the Security Council is intent on continuing the sanctions.

Albright said Hussein is responsible. “We have offered Saddam Hussein a way out of the situation to sell his oil,” she said, “but he has said he will not avail himself of this offer until his overseas assets are unfrozen. He is using his own people as pawns and he is using every trick he can.”

A U.N. embargo, imposed by the Security Council just after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, has prevented Baghdad from selling its primary revenue earner: oil.

U.N. sanctions, engineered by the United States, have resulted in a freeze on all Iraqi assets held in overseas banks.

Under a Security Council resolution adopted in 1995, Iraq is to hand over 30 percent of its oil revenues to a U.N. Compensation Commission for settling claims from migrant workers and their families who lost lives, property and wages during the Persian Gulf crisis.

But the Iraqi government has refused to export its oil under those conditions because it considers them a violation of its national sovereignty.

France and Russia, two permanent members of the Security Council, have indicated a willingness to lift the sanctions, but the United States and Britain have refused. The fifth permanent member of the council, China, has remained noncommital.

Albright described the sanctions as “a huge success” because they have neutralised the Iraqi military and hindered Baghdad’s plans to manufacture weapons of mass destruction, namely nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

“The sanctions regime,” she added, “has also helped to remove — although not totally — the military threat to the region from Iraq.”