WASHINGTON (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A group of American activists planned to fly to Iraq Friday, becoming the first U.S. citizens to challenge a U.N. ban on air travel to Baghdad, the trip's organizer said.
According to James Jennings, the 27-member group will donate, without U.S. government authorization, $150,000 worth of medicine, school supplies, medical books and eyeglasses to the Iraqis.
Jennings, founder and president of the Atlanta-based Conscience International, which is organizing the trip, said: "We have no export permit from the United States and we have refused to ask for it."
The group, which consists of representatives of religious and humanitarian organizations from 10 American cities, flew early Friday from New York to the Jordanian capital of Amman, and planned to depart later that same evening for Baghdad aboard a scheduled Royal Jordanian flight.
Jennings said that the American group has the avowed intention of repudiating U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after the state's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The group includes social workers and child disability specialists, who Jennings said planned to serve as advisers to local medical and social welfare personal
He added that the airlift to Baghdad is about the children of Iraq and the conscience of America. "One Iraqi child has died every 10 minutes for the entire eight years Clinton has been sitting in the Oval Office," he said.
It is expected that a group of Jordanian doctors and nurses will join the Americans aboard the flight to Iraq from Amman.
Jordan's official Petra news agency reported that the Jordanian medical team would perform charitable work at Iraqi hospitals.
According to government officials, Jordan has informed the U.N. Sanctions Committee about the flight.
U.N. critics believe that sanctions against Iraq hurt impoverished Iraqis rather than the government in Baghdad.
