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Iraq Rebuffs Powell Remarks
CAIRO (IslamOnline) - Iraq on Sunday rebuffed threats by United States secretary of state-designate General Colin Powell and said American intimidations could only make the Iraqi people more determined, news agencies reported.
The commander of Iraq’s air defenses, General Shahin Mohammad Yassin was quoted as saying that U.S. threats will not force Iraq to bow.
Yassin was responding to remarks by Powell that the U.S. and its allies should work towards revitalizing sanctions against Baghdad imposed in 1990 after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait.
Powell’s unprovoked statements towards Iraq are the first indication of possible future policy towards Iraq by George W. Bush’s administration.
Powell was the chairman of the Join Chief of Staff and directed U.S. military forces during the 1991 Gulf War, which pitted 33 countries against Iraq.
It was not clear why Powell singled out the oil-rich Arab country for his first remarks after the announcement of his nomination for secretary of state in the Bush administration, but many analysts in the Middle East state that Powell created his glory and image during the Gulf War of which he emerged as a hero in the U.S.
On Saturday, Iraq downplayed the coming of U.S. president-elect Bush and said it did not expect .U.S policy towards Iraq to change.
“We are not concerned with who is the [U.S.] president because we are not expecting any change,'' Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said during a meeting with a Spanish delegation.
Bush’s father, former U.S. president George Bush, is despised in Iraq and widely blamed for the deaths of millions of Iraqi children who died as the result of strict U.N.-sponsored, and U.S.-backed sanctions.
The elder Bush’s picture is drawn on the floor of the famous al-Rashid Hotel for pedestrians to stamp their shoes on.
Powell said that Iraq has yet to fulfill agreements reached in 1991, and was therefore deserving of American retaliation. “They have not yet fulfilled those agreements and my judgment is that sanctions in some form must be kept in place until they do,” he said. “We will work with our allies to re-energize the sanctions regime.”
Meanwhile, Iraq on Sunday said that sanctions have cost the country the lives of 10,000 people, mostly children, over the last month alone. The U.N. embargo on Iraq, among many other things, bans the import of medicine and chemicals. The U.S. says Iraq could use the material to manufacture chemical weapons.
Although the U.N. since December 1996 has allowed Baghdad to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies for its people, the U.S. and Britain, both powerful lobbies in the sanctions committee, managed to block the implementation of many contracts under the agreement.
Under the Iraq-U.N. Oil-for-Food program, revenues from Iraqi oil exports go into a New York escrow account where the U.N. sanctions committee can monitor the money’s use. Part of the fund is used to pay reparations for Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Iraq says the U.S. and Britain are depriving the Iraqi people of oil revenues and that the Oil-for-Food deal is a failure, as it has not fulfilled its purposes.
Iraqi officials say that while they exported more than $38 billion worth of oil, only $8.5 billion worth of contracts have arrived. “About $3.5 billion worth of contracts are on hold while there is $14-15 billion frozen in Western banks.
News agencies quoted the Iraqi health ministry as saying mortality rates from disease had soared since the curbs were imposed 10 years ago.
During November, 7,556 children under the age of five had died of diarrhea, pneumonia, respiratory- and malnutrition- related illnesses, as opposed to 258 deaths in the same time period in 1989, a year before the embargo was imposed.
The U.S. wants the sanctions in place until Iraq has fully complied with U.N. arms inspectors. Baghdad said it would not allow U.N. inspectors back into Iraq.
In addition, Iraq admitted on Saturday that it was feeling the pinch of the stringent sanctions and that Baghdad was losing money as a result.
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