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Intellectuals Urge Sweden to End Support for Iraqi Sanctions
STOCKHOLM, Aug. 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A group of prominent Swedish intellectuals urged the Swedish government on Monday to withdraw its support for the 11-year-long U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq, news agencies reported.
"More than 1.6 million people have died so far as a result of the sanctions, from famine, disease and undernourishment. More than 500,000 of them were children," the 40 intellectuals wrote in an open letter to the government published in the daily Aftonbladet, according to the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"While the people have been weakened and society has been crushed, the position of dictator Saddam Hussein has been strengthened and the people's oppression increased," the Swedish intellectuals' statement added.
The letter was signed by authors, artists, activists and politicians who are well known in Sweden, including European Parliament member Per Gahrton, author Henning Mankell and Lars Ohly, deputy leader of the Left Party, AFP reported.
"But the Swedish government still supports the sanctions. We demand that the government withdraw its support for this policy of genocide," they said.
Iraq, which has been under embargo ever since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, has been authorized since December 1996 to export a limited amount of oil under U.N. supervision to finance imports of essential goods for its 22-million population.
But, the U.N. oil-for-food program does not meet the 22-million population's most basic needs, according to AFP.
On July 4, the U.N. Security Council extended the oil-for-food program for five months, and last week U.S. President George W. Bush announced he was extending the U.S. sanctions against Iraq.
Meanwhile, an official Baghdad newspaper urged the U.N. Security Council on Monday to lift "without conditions" the embargo imposed on Iraq.
"It is time the U.N. Security Council acted in a fair way by lifting without conditions the embargo imposed on Iraq," said government owned paper Ath-Thawra.
"The Security Council has substituted international law with U.S. wishes and transformed itself into a tool of the hostile U.S. policy," the paper added, AFP reported.
Ath-Thawra (The Revolution) warned that if sanctions are maintained, Iraq "will consider itself free of all U.N. resolutions because they contravene international law."
"By submitting to the wishes of the United States, the Security Council does not deserve to be obeyed and its resolutions do not deserve to be respected," the Iraqi paper argued.
The U.N. Security Council slapped unprecedented wide-ranging sanctions on Iraq on August 6, 1990, just four days after it invaded Kuwait.
Iraq has further condemned the U.S.-advocated "smart sanctions" against the Iraqi people as "poisonous and irreparable," news agencies reported.
Iraqi oil minister Amir Rasheed - in an interview with the Turkish English newspaper during a visit to Ankara to attend the 13th Turkey-Iraq Joint Economic Commission - said that although the draft resolution of "smart sanctions" failed in the U.N. Security Council, the British and Americans will not give up.
"I am sure that they will continue to modify the draft resolution, but international public opinion has been so clear that this is an imperialistic offer which also threatens the sovereignty of Iraq's neighboring countries," said Rasheed, quoted by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Referring to the U.S. claim that Iraq continues developing weapons of mass destruction, the minister said that it is "a big lie," noting that even the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is aware that Iraq had dismantled all weapons of mass destruction.
He said that the issue is being used as a political plot against Iraq and that the U.S. uses such propaganda to "mislead and to confuse international public opinion."
Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter has notably accused the United States of deliberately provoking confrontations with Iraq, which, he says, was almost fully disarmed by 1995, news agencies reported.
Ritter says the United States undermined the work of UNSCOM, the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, and used the issue to push Iraq towards conflict with the West, the BBC online service reported.
In his new documentary film, 'In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq,' Ritter says his team was satisfied that Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995.
But, he says, the U.S. Government deliberately set new standards of disarmament criteria to maintain U.N. sanctions against Baghdad and justify bombing raids.
In the film, which was premiered at the United Nations, Ritter said UNSCOM chief Richard Butler told his inspectors: "You have to provoke a confrontation...so the U.S. can start bombing" before March 15, a Muslim holy period, BBC added.
In the film, Ritter said Washington used UNSCOM to spy on Iraq almost from the time inspections began.
Ritter called for an end to sanctions imposed on Iraq, saying he did not feel the country posed a danger any longer.
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