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Following is my translations of two articles from the Geman Daily Newspaper "Neues Deutschland" about the impending UNSC vote on Iraq. As always apologies for the translation, which I do on the spot as I type this.. **************************** Wednesday December 15th Vote on Iraq postponed (by Rainer Rupp) In order to prevent vetos by Russia and China, the vote on the resolution to create a new Arms control body for Iraq was postponed for 24 hours on Monday. ALmost exactly a year ago, the USA instructed the UN weapons inspectors UNSCOM to leave Iraq immediately. Shortly afterwards they began, together with Great Britain, to unilaterely subject Iraq to a bombing campaign, supposedly to force Baghdad to cmoply with the UN-arms control regime. Since then Iraq has consistently resisted the return of UNSCOM because the body had been discredited by the spying activities of the United States. The Irishman Dennis Halliday, until 1998 UN Humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, has repeatedly pointed out that the Embargo Policy has costed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Only after the scale of the suffering could no longer be ignored, the USA comprimised and agreed to the UN "Oil for Food Programme", which allows Iraq to sell $5,26 billion worth of oil every 6 months. However, three weeks ago, Baghdad stopped the export of oil after the programme had been extended only for one week. The USA wanted to force the other council members to agree to the resolution they had worked out together with the British about the setting up of the new monitoring body UNMOVIC. Last Friday the "Oil For Food Programme" was extended for 6 months, now the vote on UNMOVIC is due to take place. At first glance the draft resolution seems quite acceptable, because Iraq is to be allowed, in 100 day periods, to sell as much oil as it wants to, if it cooperates with UNMOVIC. If after a year all conditions are met, the sanctions could be lifted. For Russia's ambassador to the UN this is a "very ambiguous resolution" Important passages are deliberately unspecific, so that it is not possible to determine what exactly must be proven before sanctions can be lifted. Despite this, the Americans are going to great lengths to ensure that they have the Russians "on board", because without their agreement Iraq would not cooperate with the UN. Many countries do not want to be dictated to by the US any longer. They want to do business with Iraq. Only if and when Iraq can sell unlimited amounts of oil again will it be able to repay its debts to France and Russia. China has also worked out some lucrative programmes with Iraq, which can only be realised after a lifting of the sanctions. ******************************* Thursday 17th December New York (dpa/ND) UN postpones decision The UN Security Council yesterday again delayed the decision on future UN plicy towards Iraq. The current council president, Jeremy Greenstock, said on Tuesday evening theat one of the 15 council members had made an applicaiton to that effect. The council is debating a draft resolution, presented by London and supported by Washington, to resume Weapons inspections in Iraq. According to the draft resolution, the UN would lift the sanctions only after unreserved cooperation by Iraq and only for 120 days at a time. Russia and China intend to abstain from the vote. The reject the British proposal, because it does not show a clear way towards lifting the UN sanctions. Russia wants sanctions to be lifted as soon as Iraq agrees to a resumption of weapons inspections. ****************************** __________________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de Yahoo! Auktionen - gleich ausprobieren - http://auktionen.yahoo.de -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full archive and list instructions are available from the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi