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Dear Philippa In response to your query: > I've been looking for the official Israeli policy on > sanctions, does anyone have it? Philippa Winkler It is true that Israel's leaders don't seem to comment much on Iraq. My guess is that the US has made it clear that statements from Israel would be counterproductive in maintaining any residual Gulf sympathy for sanctions; in this regard, things have not changed much since 1991. You could always look at unofficial sources, as the article you circulated demonstrates; a further unofficial source would be the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: http://www.aipac.org/ especially the AIPAC sponsored letter of May 2000 to Clinton http://www.aipac.org/result.cfm?id=27; text is http://www.aipac.org/result.cfm?id=24. I hardly need to add that the text of the letter is full of simple factual inaccuracies. However, there have been occasional statements by Israeli leaders. Here's three. The first is as near as I've seen to a statement of Israeli policy. Apart from that, they're not particularly instructive. Prime Minister Rabin, 14 August 1994: "We support the policy of President Clinton and the policy of sanctions against Iraq in order to change its behavior... we line up with the United States and the other developed nations to bring Iraq to change its policies." http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0c7r0 Speech by Mr. Jeremy Issacharoff, Representative of Israel to the first Committee, head of Regional Security and Arms Control, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Jerusalem (13 October 2000): "Israel is profoundly concerned about the present situation with regard to Iraq and the lack of any monitoring and inspection mechanism in that country for the last two years. Saddam Hussein has not changed and he continues to constitute a real threat to his neighbours and the region. The United Nations bears a critical responsibility to the countries of the Middle East to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all its WMD and missile capabilities in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions." http://www.israel-un.org/committees/first/speech_131000.htm Speech by Prime Murderer Ariel Sharon, 19 March 2001, to AIPAC: "Iraq has not been under UN monitoring for more than two years and sanctions have been increasingly ignored. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein is seeking to restore his mass destruction weapons capability and his quest for long-range missiles." http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0jr40 Sorry about not being able to provide more details; if you find further, please let me know. Glen Rangwala. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 CASI's website - www.casi.org.uk - includes an archive of all postings.