Brussels, 25/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a time when Iraq is being designated as one of the potential targets of US military intervention, the EP Committee on Foreign Affairs has drawn up a disastrous report of the humanitarian and economic situation in this country. It vigorously condemns the human rights violations committed by the Iraqi government, urges for the establishment of an ad hoc international tribunal to judge the crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime and calls for the lifting of international economic and trade sanctions against Iraq, as long as Iraq agrees to allowing UN weapons inspectors to return to the country. Adopted by majority vote, with twelve abstentions, the report by Emma Nicholson de Winterbourne, from Britain, on the situation in Iraq eleven years after the Gulf War (see EUROPE of 8 December 2001, p.5), invites the Parliament to severely condemn the grave and repeated violations of human rights - mainly massive use of the death penalty and summary and arbitrary execution, torture and rape, missing persons and forced displacement of the people. She urges the Iraqi government to immediately cease encouraging the murderous policy of Palestinian suicide attacks in the Middle East.
Pending the creation of the ad hoc international tribunal for Iraq, that they seriously recommend, MEPs reaffirm the need to deploy special human rights observers throughout the territory and to create an international committee entrusted with investigating the case of people who have disappeared. At the Council and European Commission, they call for the creation of a bureau of inquiry into human rights violations and the development of an active strategy based on increased surveillance, public denunciation of violations identified, the refusal to grant visas to all Iraqi leaders wishing to come to the EU Member States, as well as a freeze on all unlawful financial assets held in the EU. For humanitarian reasons, MEPs state it is urgent to lift the generalised economic and trade sanctions while keeping the embargo on weapons and dual purpose products.
The draft resolution urges the UN to allocate part of the credits for the "Oil for Food" programme, considered unconvincing, to the provision of sustainable humanitarian aid to the 3.5 million Iraqi refugees, to displaced persons and to victims of terrorist, biological and chemical attacks. It also states it should request the decontamination of the environment as a matter of urgency, mainly in the marshes in the southern part of the country. The European Commission, for its part, is invited to study every existing possibility for more active intervention in favour of the Iraqi people - mainly through increased assistance to displaced and uprooted persons as well as more substantial resources allocated by ECHO (the Community's Humanitarian Aid Office) to humanitarian operations.
Report leaves way open to military solution, deplores Socialist Véronique de Keyser
Speaking to the press on her return from a "mission for peace and observation of the daily life of the Iraqi people", Véronique de Keyser (Belgian Socialist), accompanied by Belgian Senators Jean Cornil and Sfia Bouarfa denounced the vote by the EP's committee as an open door to US military intervention in Iraq. "The report keeps firmly to the human rights situation and is essentially geared to the humanitarian angle. That is quite legitimate. But, without openly supporting military intervention in Iraq, it leaves the road open. All the amendments calling for the cessation of any military action not covered by the UN and the exclusion of all military intervention not covered by the UN were disavowed. The same thing was true for the amendments insisting on the humanitarian crisis caused by the embargo. I am angry, as this vote is dangerous", she said, explaining that this was the main cause for abstention by the Socialists. Stressing that the "embargo has cost the lives of 600,000 children and at least one and a half million people in all", she felt that the main thing today was to seek to "establish dialogue with the Iraqi civil society, the only solution towards a viable transition, and to help to rebuild the country, not to bomb it". During their observation mission, the three MEPs met the civil society (women's organisations, trade unions, writers) as well as Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Aziz, the Foreign Minister, the President of the National Assembly and an official for the peace movement. They said they were struck by the dignity of the civil society that lives in poverty, and by its determination not to give up in the face of the threat of eventual American military intervention. "Such an hypothesis would make the population unite around the government", said Sfia Bouarafa. "If the logic of the embargo imposed for the past twelve years is to make the country democratic, then it has failed. The regime is still doing well", added Jean Cornil. Denouncing the policy of double standards which gives Iraq a "status of exception that other countries like China or Iran do not have", the three MEPs refused to give credit to the idea that Iraq is a threat for the world and, on the contrary, stressed the "need for the Union's political and economic intervention in the prospect of rebuilding the country and bringing it democracy".