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a couple of news articles:
November 29, 1998
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- Iraq hosts a conference this
week to focus attention on what it says is an enduring
health and environmental disaster caused by depleted
uranium munitions used by the United States and Britain
in the 1991 Gulf War.
"This war has not ended," Nasra Sadoon,
director-general at the Information and Culture Ministry,
told Reuters. "It's still going on without the world knowing
about it."
Depleted uranium (DU) is used to harden ammunition,
making it highly effective in piercing tank armour.
Britain has said DU rounds can produce small amounts of
radioactive and toxic particles on impact, but it is unlikely
that anyone outside the target area could be affected.
Sadoon is among the organisers of the two-day
conference due to open on Wednesday, bringing together
Iraqi researchers with 50 foreign doctors, scientists and
veterans of U.S. and British forces suffering from
so-called Gulf War syndrome.
Iraq will give details of what it says is a dramatic jump in
cancer cases since the Gulf War, especially in the south.
"There is massive radioactive contamination in southern
provinces, in addition to the exposure of the people to
radioactive and chemical toxicity," said Sami al-Araji, who
serves on a government committee studying the war's
aftermath.
Araji said allied forces had estimated they had used 300
tonnes of DU munitions against Iraqi forces, but said
other researchers put the figure at 700 to 800 tonnes.
"There has been an alarming increase in cancers and
other unusual diseases," he said, citing genetic
deformities and abnormalities in Iraqi children born after
the Gulf War.
"Among military personnel, lymphomas and leukaemia
have risen five to six times in the last five years. Among
children and civilians the rise has gone beyond that
number," he added.
The southern Shi'ite Moslem provinces are some of Iraq's
poorest, regularly scoring badly in surveys of health care,
malnutrition, school attendance and water sanitation.
With its health services devastated by eight years of
sanctions imposed for its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq says it
cannot afford expensive cancer drugs to treat the
afflicted, let alone the huge cost of decontaminating
DU-polluted areas.
Sadoon said particles from DU munitions had found their
way into food and water chains, causing cancer and other
diseases.
"The conference will also discuss the link between Gulf
War syndrome and similar effects in Iraq, which we
believe are caused by depleted uranium," she added.
Iraqi officials say they hope to spur scientific debate on
what they see as a deadly legacy of the conflict, while
acknowledging that more research needs to be done.
"We are seeing a good number of patients coming from
the area of heavy bombardment, especially in the south,"
said Selma Haddad, head of the oncology unit at the
Mansour Children's Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, one of
the two main centres to which child cancer cases are
referred from all over Iraq.
"It might be related to the effect of that (DU) pollution, but
I think we need a more wide epidemiological and
statistical study to be sure of that," she said.
Iraq sent a formal complaint to U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan in May, reserving its right to compensation for
the "appalling damage" caused by allied use of DU tank
shells.
Britain rejected Iraq's charge that its use of DU weapons
violated the U.N. Charter and international agreements. It
said its Challenger tanks had fired fewer than 100 new
120-mm rounds with a DU core against Iraqi forces and
its armoured forces had been operating well away from
population centres.
In October a preliminary report by the World Health
Organisation proposed sending a WHO mission to
southern Iraq to research radiation levels and reportedly
higher cancer rates.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rania Masri <rmasri@leb.net>
Subject: [ADC Iraq Task Force] Iraqi Weaponry - focus of CNN-Time
Good morning,
Yesterday evening, CNN dedicated a segment of its evening program
(CNN+Time) to further presenting the possibility of Iraq's weaponry
program. (article enclosed below).
There was no mention of the suffering of the Iraqi people due to the
sanctions.
There was no mention about the impossibility of the UNR 687 resolution --
according to Zalinskas (former UNSCOM inspector) to completely verify
destruction of biological and chemical weapons is impossible.
This is the second report in the mainstream news that talks about Iraq
without mentioning the Iraqi peole. (the first was a report on 60 minutes
a week ago that talked about the barbarity of Odei - Saddam Hussein's son
- according to a defector.)
- Rania Masri
---------- Forwarded message ----------
CNN: Iraq Tried to Buy Weaponry
By The Associated Press
Sunday, November 29, 1998; 9:59 p.m. EST
Despite years of claims it has ended all programs to
build weapons of mass destruction, Iraq made a bid to
acquire prohibited missile technology last May, CNN
reported Sunday.
In its program NewsStand, produced with Time
magazine, CNN said Iraqi missile experts, escorted by
Iraqi secret police, went to the Romanian capital
Bucharest to negotiate the purchase of guidance
equipment for long-range missiles.
Iraq is required to eliminate its long-range missiles and
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons under
resolutions by the U.N. Security Council adopted Pd0us
the 1991 Gulf War that ended Iraq's occupation of
Kuwait.
The CNN report quoted unnamed sources and Scott
Ritter, an American ex-Marine who resigned as a U.N.
arms inspector in August who complained the U.S.
government was undermining the search for Iraq's
forbidden weapons.
Iraq has insisted since the early 1990s that it has
destroyed all its prohibited weapons. Tough U.N. trade
sanctions, imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait,
cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify that its
weaponry has been destroyed.
According to the program's transcript, the Iraqi purchase
in Bucharest was blocked because spy agencies from
the United States, Romania and Israel uncovered the
potential deal and monitored the Iraqis' two-week visit.
``We had the goods on the Iraqis. ... We caught them
red-handed,'' Ritter told NewsStand.
CNN said Romania's government cooperated in the
spying operation.
Iraq refused to comment on the reports until after
Sunday's broadcast, CNN said.
NewsStand also noted the Security Council, which set
up the arms inspection program, was never officially
informed of the spy operation in Bucharest that was
approved by Richard Butler, the chief U.N. arms
inspector.
Ritter, who earlier had disclosed U.N. arms inspectors'
dealings with Israel's Mossad spy agency and the CIA,
expressed disappointment the Romanian operation had
remained secret.
``We could not present to the Security Council the most
compelling evidence'' of Iraqi non-compliance with U.N.
resolutions, Ritter said.
He said revealing the information would have opened
up ``the sources and methods used to collect it ... which
governments did not want to put at risk.''
According to NewsStand, agents learned of the plans
for the Romanian visit from an Iraqi engineer who
defected. They also had documents found at the farm of
Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein's son-in-law.
Iraq allowed inspection of al-Majid's chicken farm after
he defected in 1995; he later returned to Iraq and was
killed. Among the documents from his farm was a
previous contract for missile equipment with the
state-run Romanian company Aerofina.
--
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