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Iraq Seeks Arab Stand Against "Smart" Sanctions
BAGHDAD, June 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraqi MPs started to tour Arab countries to whip up support for Baghdad's rejection of the "smart" sanctions proposed by Britain and the United States, parliamentary sources said Tuesday.
Iraq wants the Arab countries to stop their silence over the proposed revision of sanctions because it "encourages the American administration to continue its efforts to adopt its criminal and treacherous proposal," Iraqi newspapers reported.
The first parliamentary delegation led by deputy speaker, Ojeil Jalal Ismail, left Monday on a tour to Egypt, Syria and Libya, while another team of MPs left for Yemen, Sudan and Lebanon.
The MPs are carrying a message from parliament speaker, Saadun Hammadi, in which he blasts smart sanctions as a bid "to reinforce sanctions and turn Iraq into a protectorate under the cover of international law."
Next week another delegation will start a North African tour takes it to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.
Meanwhile, deputy Prime Minister, Tareq Aziz, met a Russian envoy and urged Moscow, which has veto power in the U.N. Security Council, to block the revision of the sanctions regime, the French news agency, AFP, reported.
The United Nations is to hold a series of key meetings this week to decide on the U.S.-British proposal to impose smart sanctions on Iraq.
Kicking off the process, the 15-member Security Council was to hold a public debate Tuesday with non-council members on U.N. policy toward Iraq, allowing Baghdad's Arab neighbors and Turkey to display their views.
"Baghdad rejects the evil proposal that reveals a Zionist plot against Iraq and its neighbors," Aziz stressed during talks with Russian envoy Nikolai Kartouzov, the official INA news agency reported.
Kartouzov "reiterated his country's solidarity with Iraq and its determination to work to obtain a lifting of the embargo," INA said.
Aziz called on Moscow to oppose the proposal, calling it "detrimental not only for Iraq's interests but also for those countries, led by Russia, who have trade relations with it."
Russia, for its part, has threatened to veto a U.S.-backed resolution in the Security Council that would revamp the embargo on Iraq and tighten United Nations controls over Baghdad's imports of military-related items, saying it "would seriously harm Russian economic interests", officials said, western news agencies reported.
Russia, United States, Britain, France and China are permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council with veto power.
Earlier over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov warned, in a letter, the U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that Moscow would block the resolution because it would damage commercial relations with Iraq.
"We cannot allow it to pass," Ivanov wrote.
Russia, Iraq's closest ally on the council, has long opposed the embargoes.
Ivanov last week criticized the U.S.-British plan and said he would probably offer an alternative, which diplomats expected at a public meeting on Iraq, scheduled late Tuesday.
Powell indicated Monday that it might not be possible to reach consensus on a new United Nations resolution on Iraq in time for a July 3 deadline. If so, it would be the second postponement because of strong opposition from Moscow and Beijing.
Russia has signed contracts with Iraq valued at more than $1 billion in the past year through a U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid program. It has been awarded billions more in future contracts to develop Iraq's oil fields after sanctions.
Before the sanctions were imposed in 1990, Russia supplied Baghdad with military goods worth up to $8 billion to be repaid with oil. Its only chance to recoup some of the outstanding debts is if sanctions are lifted and Russian firms are allowed to invest in Iraqi oil fields.
But, the United States has opposed any proposal allowing major foreign investment into Iraq's oil industry until Iraq meets the Security Council demands to eliminate its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, western news agencies said.
In order to get sanctions suspended, Iraq has to allow U.N. arms inspectors back into the country to check on its weapons of mass destruction programs.
That requirement is contained in a December 1999 resolution, which Russia says needs to be refined. The inspectors have not been allowed back into Iraq since they left on the eve of a December 1998 bombing campaign.
In another move, U.S. navy fighter jet has attacked Monday an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq in what U.S. military officials called an act of self-defense, Middle East reported online.
The F-14D Tomcat, flying from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf, struck the Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery site near Basra, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
A damage assessment was being conducted, the statement said.
The strikes were said to be in response to Iraqi "threats and acts" against coalition forces and their aircraft patrolling the "no fly" zone over southern Iraq.
"If Iraq were to cease its threatening actions, coalition strikes would cease as well," Central Command said, Arabia news agency reported online.
Twenty-three Iraqis have been killed and 11 were injured in US-British air raid over northern Iraq last Wednesday.
Iraqi civilians have been under continuous U.S.-British air raids patrolling "no fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq since its 1991 invasion of Kuwait.
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