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Hello all. Glenn from Voices UK here. You may have seen this week's New Statesman (25 June) -- complete with advert on page 9 for next weekend's London conference with Denis Halliday. If you can, I would ask you to respond to a letter in the issue critical of Mark Thomas's column on sanctions ( letter, and my own reply reproduced below). Obviously, the more letters they get, the more likely one will get published. Send replies to letters@newstatesman.co.uk including your full postal address, or to: Letters Page, New Statesman, 7th Floor, Victoria Station House, 191 Victoria St, London SW1E 5NE. Fax 020 7828 1881. Maximum published length appears to be approximately 200 words, and would have to be in in the next couple of days in order to make next week's publication date. Some good replies on why "smart" sanctions aren't smart at all, and on the morality of collectively punishing civilians would fit the bill, I think. (See Casi site or Voices: www.viwuk.freeserve.co.uk or recent Voices newsletter for information and sources.) Here's the letter. All the best, Glenn. ----------------------------------- IF NOT SANCTIONS, THEN WHAT? THE POINT, Mark Thomas (18 June), is not that the critics of UN sanctions need to acknowledge that Saddam Hussein is a bastard, but that they need to propose what the UN and the west should do about his regime, in place of sanctions. If it is true that the Saddam regime is a murderous dictatorship which has brought the Iraqi and other peoples of the Middle East into a series of historic disasters, and that the existing sanctions regime has helped further to impoverish Iraqis, then manifestly the UN needs not abandon existing sanctions, but to replace them with new policies that will be both more humane and more effective in defeating the Iraqi regime. If "smarter" sanctions are not the answer, what is? MARTIN SHAW Professor, International relations and Politics University of Sussex ----------------------------------------------- Dear Sir/ Madam Martin Shaw (letters, 25th June) frames the issue of UN sanctions on Iraq as part of the necessity of "defeating the Iraqi regime." Putting aside the questionable premise that this is indeed what motivates our policymakers, Mr Shaw's view, and its Foreign Office variant of 'containment', poses serious moral and legal questions about how our government conducts its foreign affairs. The effects of these sanctions have not just been to "impoverish Iraqis." Sanctions mean half a million dead children; a quarter of surviving children left 'stunted'; rampant disease, crime, inflation and unemployment; devastated public infrastructure; and wholesale social collapse. Before proposing we keep this policy going but just make it a bit "smarter" it is worth pausing to reflect on the enormity of what it means for us to cause the death of one thousand Iraqi children every week (according to Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian co-ordinator). Who knows, perhaps if we tweak this 11-year-old policy enough we can perhaps reduce the figure to only 500 infant deaths weekly, and so allow our consciences to rest. There are legitimate tools of international security. The punishment of an entire population is, explicitly, not one of them. Yours faithfully, Glenn Bassett. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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