Brussels, 28/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The question of the lifting of sanctions against Iraq was at the centre of the hearing on "Iraq and the international community", organised this week in Brussels by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee. While western experts generally felt that the embargo is counterproductive, representatives of the Iraqi opposition invited the parliamentarians to show caution over this issue, underlining that the lifting of the embargo strengthened the regime of Saddam Hussein. The elements presents during this hearing will form the basis of the own-initiative report that Emma Nicholson, British Liberal Democrat, will present.
According to Hans Graf von Sponeck, former head of the United Nations "oil for food" programme, the present developments in Iraq show that the economic sanctions have not managed to lead to a political change. Denise Vienot, President of Caritas Europe, felt that the sanctions are not justifiable and are contrary to the United Nations Charter. Similarly, the MEP Niall Andrews (UEN, Irish) noted that the price paid, notably by Iraqi children, is too high to justify maintaining the embargo. Wilfried Kreisel, Executive Director if the World Health Organisation, painted a terrible picture of this issue, by underlining that the rate of infant mortality has doubled and that diseases such as malaria and typhoid are widespread, since the imposition of sanctions.
The representatives of the Iraqi opposition, on the contrary, all called for the maintaining of sanctions, by asserting, as Sheik Mohammed Ali, from the Iraqi National Congress, that the unconditional lifting of the embargo would not put an end to the suffering of the Iraqi people. The sanctions probably prevent Saddam from rearming, felt Driss El Yazami, from the Human Rights League. How to avoid that a lifting of sanction would allow the regime to invest in armaments? Wondered the MEP Alexandros Baltas (Greek, Socialist).
One millions Iraqis have been killed since Saddam's coup d'etat and the regime had a long experience not respecting resolutions before the sanctions (…). The embargo must not be used to cover the regime's crimes, underlined before the press El Yazami, when inviting the Europeans not to be naïve, and rather called for a modification of sanctions, which could, for example, transform itself into "oil for reconstruction", to cover the needs in terms of health, schools or water. The only element of change possible would a change of regime, underlined, in agreement, Amin Bakhtiar, from the Human Rights Alliance, who called for the creation of an international tribunal to try the crimes of the Iraqi regime.