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--- Mercy17@att.net wrote: > Could someone please email me a list of daily goods > banned under the sanctions (ie: pencils, bleach) and > why they are banned. I am trying to put together a > visual representation of the common things that are > unavailable to the Iraqi people. Thanks for any help > anyone can offer! Hi Elizabeth, Let me try to answer your question by answering a slightly different question, namely that of what can be exported to Iraq, and how. This has changed over time. Immediately following the 2 August invasion of Kuwait, all exports to Iraq except "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs" (Security Council Resolution 661, 6 August 1990) were prohibited by the Security Council. In practice, there was a near total halt to trade as a military blockade moved into place and as Iraqi assets were frozen and exports not allowed (both preventing the purchase of imports). The "cease fire" resolution (SCR 687, 3 April 1991) then technically expanded the conditions for imports to Iraq: <quote begins> the prohibitions against the sale or supply to Iraq of commodities or products, other than medicine and health supplies, and prohibitions against financial transactions ... shall not apply to foodstuffs notified to the Security Council [Iraq Sanctions] Committee ... or, with the approval of that Committee, under the simplified and accelerated "no-objection" procedure, to materials and supplies for essential civilian needs as identified in the report of the Secretary-General dated 20 March 1991, and in any further findings of humanitarian need by the Committee; <quote ends> In other words, anything that ALL fifteen members of the Sanctions Committee (the same composition as the Security Council) accepted as "humanitarian" COULD be exported to Iraq by gaining the Committee's approval. Thus, technically, there is not a list of banned "humanitarian" items. In practice, various items have not received approval by the Committee over time. As the Committee has not published the meetings of its meetings, it is hard to generate lists of such items. Furthermore, it is hard to learn what arguments are being used. In some cases, the denial seems "innocent" (e.g. currently the Iraqi government is trying to amend the "distribution plan" of the current "oil for food" phase to include cigarette filters). In other cases, the denial is much more political (e.g. the US seems to have a policy of near blanket denials to contracts for Iraq's telecommunications sector). There are two twists on the mechanism that I've just described above. First, since passage of Resolution 1284 in December 1999, there have been a series of "green lists", the items on which can be "fast tracked" for import without Sanctions Committee approval: their approval comes from the UN's Office of the Iraq Programme, which simply checks to see whether a contract contains only items on these green lists. Second, "dual use" items (i.e. those with both a civilian and a military application) have their own mechanism. When Iraq wishes to import such an item, the contract is forwarded to both the Sanctions Committee and to a body made up of people from Unmovic (the biological, chemical and missile weapons inspectors) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (the nuclear weapons inspectors). They attempt to determine whether the item can be adequately monitored once inside Iraq, to ensure that it is not put to military use. If they think that they can, they will recommend to the Sanctions Committee that the item be imported; they then retain the right to conduct inspections on it. This presents an obvious problem: with no weapons inspectors in Iraq, the ability to assure oneself about end use decreases substantially. Finally, some closing words on loose bits and pieces: 1. military exports to Iraq are banned. 2. chlorine is not. While it is popularly believed that chlorine is banned (a belief spread by some Iraqi officials) UN reports on the "oil for food" programme document its import into Iraq from the programme's early days. I hope that this helps somewhat, although I recognise that it may not in the way that you were hoping. The sanctions continue to cause damage throughout Iraqi society, but the mechanisms are somewhat more subtle. Please do let me know if you have any questions about the above. Best, ===== Colin Rowat 274 Vanderbilt Ave., #2 Brooklyn NY 11205 USA (m) 917 517 5840 (f) 707 221 3672 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://www.casi.org.uk