By Jennifer Thompson
On October 29, Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council announced that US citizens and aircraft working for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq would be banned. However, the Iraqi leadership's hope of forcing a split in the UN Security Council over the continuation of the seven years of murderous sanctions failed to materialise.
Iraq rejected the October 24 UN Security Council resolution — Russia, France, China and Egypt abstained — threatening a travel ban on its officials if Baghdad continued to hamper UN weapons inspectors. The resolution was prompted by a report, written by the Australian head of UNSCOM, Richard Butler, critical of Iraq's lack of cooperation.
During a closed-door Security Council meeting, French ambassador Alain Dejammet opposed additional sanctions saying there was no "deliberate strategy" by Iraq to deny access to UN inspectors. "Baghdad has for the most part respected its duties to cooperate", Dejammet told the council. Russian ambassador Lavrov also said that Butler's report needed to be considered "objectively" by the council.
Iraq's gamble is an attempt to disrupt the automatic continuation of the crippling US/UN sanctions against it. The Iraqi news agency reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has asked the UN for "complete clarity regarding a total lifting of the embargo, starting with a legal and strict implementation of the disarmament clause of UN resolution 687" imposed after the Gulf War. Hussein called for a dialogue to establish the UN and Iraq's rights and obligations "without any confusion, ambiguity or procrastination".
On October 2, anticipating the Security Council would move toward lifting sanctions on Iraq because of the progress made towards disarmament outlined in UN resolution 687, Iraq's foreign minister Mohammed Said Al-Sahaf addressed the UN general assembly.
The US/UN sanctions have meant that Iraq has received little revenue from oil and almost no hard currency. This is devastating to an economy and civil infrastructure already reeling under the destruction of the war. Oil production accounted for 95% of export earnings prior to the war.
UNICEF reported on May 29 that 27.5% of Iraqi children under five suffered extreme chronic malnutrition. A survey published in June by the Iraqi health ministry, in conjunction with UNICEF and the World Food Program, found that one in four Iraqi children were malnourished. More than 1.5 million people had died from the effects of the sanctions by June. On October 10, international food agencies warned of malnutrition and urged donor countries to support programs targeting vulnerable groups such as small children.
Oil for food delays
Under the 1995 UN resolution 986, the so-called oil-for-food resolution, Iraq was to be allowed to sell oil worth US$2 billion over six months. Of the $2 billion, after payment of war reparations and costs of the UN enforcement of post-war conditions, $1.3 billion was reserved for buying food, medicines and other desperately needed goods.
A memorandum of understanding to implement the resolution was not reached until May 1996. Implementation began on December 10. All contracts signed by Iraq to purchase the necessary goods had to be approved by the UN sanctions committee. The agreement was renewed on June 8.
There have been long delays caused by the sanctions committee considering contracts. According to Iraq's UN mission, out of 222 contracts submitted, by March 2 only nine had been approved, accounting for $136 million of the $700 million in the "Iraq account" for the purchase of medicines and food.
On September 18, Al-Sahaf reported that although more than 100 days had passed since the end of the first stage of the oil-for-food deal, there were still 60 contracts from the first phase yet to be submitted, more than 70 contracts had been suspended at the request of the US and Britain, and 21 contracts were rejected by the two countries.
Former US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, Robert Pelletreau, said resolution 986 had strengthened the international coalition against Iraq. "It has removed the argument that some were making that the United Nations was somehow responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi people, not their own government."
In a March submission to the Security Council, former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke called for an end to sanctions on Iraq. "The only effect of resolution 986 to this date is that it confirms the complete indifference in the sanctions committee/ Security Council to the misery and deaths among the Iraqi people. Instead of expediting delivery of medicines, wheat, rice and milk to a sick and hungry people, you have delayed delivery when you know the plight of the people."
Clarke said that even if resolution 986 was renewed regularly and administered promptly, the limited oil sales it authorises will never be sufficient to repair Iraq's medical and health care systems and purchase needed medical supplies, much less provide funds to purchase sufficient food.
The Iraqi vice-president, Tareq Aziz, told a recent Baghdad seminar that then US secretary of state James Baker, whom he met days before the start of the 1991 war, warned him that the US-led coalition which ousted Iraqi troops from Kuwait would transform Iraq "to the pre-industrial age" and impose a new leadership.
There are differences in the Security Council related to inter-imperialist competition for the reopening of trade with Iraq and the race to win lucrative reconstruction contracts, the depressed state of the world oil market and the US aim to consolidate its hegemony in the region.
General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the 1991 attack on Iraq, told the US Congress in 1990: "Middle East oil is the west's lifeblood. It fuels us today, and being 77% of the free world's proven oil reserves, is going to fuel us when the rest of the world runs dry." US oil companies have a huge stake in the region. It is estimated that oil accounts for 25% of all US profits from the Third World. Governments that the US cannot control are a danger to its oil supply, as well as oil company profits.
Western hypocrisy
The US and British reason for maintaining sanctions on Iraq — the need to dismantle the regime's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons program — rings very hollow, particularly in the light of the 1995 Scott inquiry into illegal British arms exports. When Saddam Hussein killed 5000 Kurdish villagers with chemical weapons in 1988, military aid to Iraq continued to flow from the west, the Soviet Union and China. Secretly, the British government guidelines on arms exports to Iraq were "relaxed".
In January 1988, British trade minister Alan Clark met with British arms manufacturers and advised them to "downgrade" their official descriptions of arms-related material when applying for export licences to make it appear to be equipment for civilian use.
British firm Matrix-Churchill supplied Iraq with machine tools for the manufacture of missiles and shells, and provided technology for Iraq's nuclear weapons project. Another British firm, Ordtec, supplied fuses used in Iraq's nuclear program. British companies Walter Somers and Forgemasters constructed components for Saddam's ill-fated "super gun", capable of firing nuclear or biological shells 700 kilometres.
British firms also supplied Iraq with sodium cyanide and sodium sulphide for chemical weapons, together with 10,000 suits for protection of troops involved in chemical or biological attacks. Also supplied were plutonium, zirconium, thorium oxide and gas spectrometers — all essential for making nuclear bombs.
None of this trade was interrupted by the September 1988 massacre of more than 5000 Kurdish civilians in Halabjah and Ekmala. Iraq's airforce used nerve gas, almost certainly made from British components.
Western ally Turkey used napalm bombs in October against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, without any reproach from its friends in Washington, Bonn and London.<>><>41559MS>n<>255D>