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The following article and leader appear in todays Independent (4th
August 1998). The latest news is that the talks in Baghdad have collapsed
and Butler is leaving early. There's been speculation on the news that
this may be the start of a fresh "crisis".
Patrick Cockburn also had two very good articles on Saturday and Monday
which, due to computer problems I was unable to mail to the list. If I get
time I'll transcribe them by hand.
If anyone can make the fast/vigil (12 noon Sunday 9th August - 6 pm
Wednesday 12th August, opposite Downing street) who hasn't already signed
on please contact either myself (01865-276012) or David Polden (0171-607
2302).
Gabriel Carlyle
Magdalen College, Oxford.
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Iraq on collision course
with UN
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Iraq moved closer to a confrontation with the
United Nations yesterday when a senior Iraqi
leader accused Richard Butler, head of the
UN team looking for Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, of seeking to implement an
American policy of continuing sanctions.
Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister,
who is in charge of the negotiations with Mr
Butler, said the UN team "is back to its old
games, to its old tricks, games of confusing
the major issues and the minor issues". He
denied that Iraq had any biological, chemical
or nuclear weapons or the means to deliver
them.
After the first morning session with Mr
Butler, the former Australian ambassador to
the UN, Mr Aziz held an unprecedented
briefing in Baghdad. He said that, despite
strict monitoring of Iraq by the UN, Mr
Butler's team had no evidence to show that
Iraq still possessed non-conventional
weapons. An Iraqi complaint is that the UN
holds Iraq guilty unless it can prove its
innocence.
Iraq's sharp tone may mean that relations
with the UN will move to a crisis faster than
had been expected. Mr Butler produces his
six-monthly report on Iraqi compliance with
UN resolutions in October when Iraq has
implied that it might end the whole
inspection process if sanctions were not
lifted.
In a statement last week a meeting of the
Iraqi leadership, chaired by President Saddam
Hussein, said that this week's talks with Mr
Butler would be decisive in deciding Iraqi
policy. It asked why Iraq should submit to
intrusive inspections and monitoring if the
United States and Britain were determined to
resist "taking any step whatsoever to alleviate
and lift the embargo".
Mr Aziz made the same points yesterday,
accusing the inspection team led by Mr
Butler of procrastinating by giving undue
attention to minor issues. It is not clear,
however, if Iraq intends to stop co-operation
with Mr Butler and whether it will do so
immediately.
As Mr Aziz and Mr Butler met, taxis arrived
outside the Foreign Ministry each carrying a
small wooden coffin on its roof rack said to
contain an Iraqi baby which died as a result of
sanctions. The taxis were accompanied by
grieving, black clad women.
While the propaganda is cruel Unicef, the
UN children's fund, says almost a third of
Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition and in
the Saddam Children's Hospital, the largest
paediatric hospital in Baghdad, Dr Dhia
al-Obaidi, the director and consultant
paediatrician, said: "Before the war the
mortality for children under five was 23 per
thousand; now it is 120 per thousand."
If Iraq does throw out Mr Butler and declares
it has fulfilled the terms of the cease-fire
agreement of 1991 it is unclear what the UN
Security Council could do. Use of armed
force is unlikely to be effective in winning
Iraqi compliance. There would also be
international resistance to starving Iraq out.
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These Iraq talks are achieving nothing
The regular meetings between the United
Nations weapons inspector, Richard Butler,
and the Iraqi ministers have become an
endless litany of polite hopes and practical
hopelessness. Each time, Butler comes out
saying that the inspectorate is close to
completing its work and sanctions should
soon be lifted. To which Tariq Aziz, the
smooth-talking deputy leader, replies that
sanctions are no longer justified, that Iraq has
fully complied with the resolutions and that
maintaining punitive measures is simply a
plot by the Americans to keep Iraq on its
knees.
There is more truth to this than America's
allies, Britain in particular, may care to
admit. The ritual in Baghdad is being played
out at the expense of Iraq's ordinary citizens,
as many as 2 million of whom have been
brought to the edge of starvation by
sanctions. America does want to bring
Saddam Hussein down. His continued
presence in the Middle East makes a mockery
of its victory in the Gulf war and is
increasingly embarrassing to its relations
with the Arab world. The Arab Middle East
is tired of a conflict that has all the
appearances of a West-versus-East act of
bullying and has made Saddam Hussein, one
of its history's most vicious tyrants, appear as
a victim.
For the more cynical, there is also a case for
arguing that America, at this stage, does not
want the complete collapse in oil prices that
unrestrained increases in Iraqi exports would
bring. It would damage terribly both
American (and North Sea) oil producers at
home, and Saudi Arabia and the other
pro-Western regimes in the Gulf. The
problem for America is that it does not know
what to do. It can't seem to bring Saddam
Hussein down, and yet it is loth to let him off
the hook. Pressed by Congress, President
Clinton has come up with a plan that spends
$5m on promoting a "Free Iraq" Radio and
another $5m on bolstering the exiled
opposition. No one seriously believes that
either will have much effect on a dictatorship
that has used every outside pressure to
increase its own power
Thus sanctions have become a gesture not of
intent or of value - they may even make
Hussein's hold over his country stronger, not
weaker - but of lack of alternative. They
should not be. If the object is really to topple
the regime and reintroduce Iraq into the
Middle Eastern fold, then there is a lot to be
said for relieving sanctions and promoting
the free trade of goods and ideas. these have
had far more success in bringing down
Communism than ever force has. Why not in
the Middle East too? The time has come for a
new strategy to cope with the Butcher of
Baghdad.
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