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Iraq Urges Arab Countries To Block "Smart Sanctions"
BAGHDAD, May 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq urged Arab countries Friday to work together to block a proposal by the United States and Britain to amend U.N. sanctions on Baghdad, saying its adoption would harm the whole region.
"We urge Arab countries to combine their efforts to block the proposal by all means they think good," the official INA news agency quoted Mohammad al-Duri, Iraq's representative to the United Nations, as saying during a meeting with Arab ambassadors there.
"Arab countries should not be deceived by American or British propaganda, and Iraq's refusal to counter this proposal reflects its desire to maintain economic relations with all members of the Arab world," Duri said.
"If this proposal is adopted, Iraq's, and the whole region, will suffer from it," he warned. "The scheme aims not at serving Iraq's interests or alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people, but rather placing Baghdad under a protectorate."
Washington and London are working to have the proposals, which would amend sanctions to maintain strict controls on military goods but ease those on consumer goods, approved by June 3rd when the oil-for-food program comes up for renewal.
But, the Iraqi regime has firmly rejected the so-called "smart sanctions" and has gone so far as to threaten any neighbors that cooperate to help make them work.
Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz has warned that Baghdad would hit back by suspending the oil-for-food program introduced in 1996 and under which Iraq exports crude oil under U.N. supervision to finance imports of humanitarian supplies.
Oil analysts are taking Iraq's threat to suspend the oil-for-food program seriously, London's The Financial Times said Wednesday.
Aziz informed diplomats in Baghdad that "not a single barrel of oil will be sold under this program," reported the London paper.
"The Iraqis are ready for confrontation if Washington sticks to imposing new conditions on them," a Western diplomat in Baghdad told the AFP news agency.
Earlier in the week, Russia stepped in with a draft resolution of its own that could block for six months proposals to amend the program, which runs in half-yearly phases.
"But with the five permanent members of the Security Council divided on the draft. The council would have to prolong the current program from one week to two, or even one month, to allow a better study of the proposal and get rid of any opposition," the diplomat said.
Ath-Thawra newspaper, mouthpiece of the ruling Baath party in Iraq, said Friday that "smart sanctions are only a stupid and deceitful attempt to make conditions of living for Iraqis yet more difficult, depriving them of the most basic rights."
Iraq, meanwhile, urged the United Nations "not to submit to U.S. pressure and colonialist blackmail but to assume its responsibility as it must."
"The United States is piling on the pressure for a majority vote," said Aziz, warning the "proposal will be still-born, like U.N. resolution 1284, if there is any abstention among the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council."
He was referring to the December 1999 abstention by China, France and Russia during a vote on U.N. resolution 1284, which Iraq has never applied and which offers a suspension of the embargo for the return of international weapons inspectors to the country.
Both the U.S. and U.K. are hoping the Security Council will examine the 30-page resolution by the end of the month, said the BBC.
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