IRAQ SANCTIONS MONITOR Number 154 Monday, November 13, 2000. _______________________________________________________ NEWS LATEST++++++++++GEORGE GALLOWAY MP will be hosting the premiere of the Big Ben to Baghdad bus film on Thursday - that is, if he isn't locked up for breaking sanctions! As ISM subscribers knew first, George - together with Catholic priest Noel Barry, hereditary peer Lord Rea and five others - blew a hole in 10 years of British sanctions against Iraq by flying into the country from Britain. This is the first flight from Britain since sanctions were imposed a decade ago. George will be flying back from Jordan on Thursday and will launch the 60-minute film at the Brunei Theatre in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London at 6.30pm on Thursday. Be there to celebrate _______________________________________________________ INVITATION The Arab Club of Britain announces the premiere showing of the film "Big Ben to Baghdad". The epic journey through three continents, ten countries and 15,000 miles from London to Baghdad in a veteran double-decker London Routemaster bus. The Mariam Appeal chairman Mr. George Galloway MP will be joined by politician Tony Benn MP and Sabah Al-Mukhtar, President of the Arab Lawyers Association for debate following the film. The film will be shown at the Brunei Theater at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, at 630 p.m. on Thursday, 16th November, 2000. Nearest Tube station is Russell Square, London WC1 Admission free but donations are welcome ____________________________________________________ Russian foreign minister leaves for Iraq. Moscow, 13th November: Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov left for the Middle East today. He begins his tour with a visit to Baghdad where he intends to discuss Russian initiatives aimed at resolving the Iraqi situation... Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0800 gmt 13 November 00. _____________________________________________________ JWA TO UNDERTAKE CULTURAL AID FLIGHT TO IRAQ. According to "Jordan Times", the Jordan Writers Association (JWA) is organizing a charter flight to Baghdad on Nov. 14 in solidarity with sanctions-crippled Iraq, the first such move by an Arab cultural organization in 10 years. The plane will carry some 168 intellectuals from the JWA including members of various cultural committees and needed cultural aid to the Iraqi people such as books, magazines and computers, the JWA president revealed. The flight will return to Jordan the same day. _____________________________________________________ Iraq flight - News in brief. THE first flight from Greece to Iraq in a decade has landed in Baghdad with 100 passengers in a show of solidarity. Medecins Sans Frontieres had UN approval. Source: SUNDAY TIMES 12/11/2000 ______________________________________________________ Dealing With Iraq. One of the first foreign policy challenges that the next president will encounter upon assuming office is Iraq. The economic sanctions and "no-fly" zones that the Clinton administration has long claimed have locked Saddam Hussein in a "box from which he cannot escape" have all but collapsed in recent weeks. The next administration will have to consider not the renewal - but a major overhaul - of Iraq policy to restore American credibility in the region It is no secret that international community's will to maintain the American-backed sanctions against Iraq has steadily evaporated. Except for Britain, all U.S. allies have expressed reservation about a policy that has brought starvation to the Iraqi people while leaving Saddam firmly in control. Indeed, the food-for-oil deal that the United States agreed to for humanitarian reasons in the aftermath of the Gulf War has become a conduit for sympathetic powers to send vast quantities of shipments to Baghdad. Meanwhile, the United States moved to relax the oil embargo against Iraq when oil prices started to climb a few months ago. But the clearest sign that Saddam Hussein has escaped from his "box" came last week when he resumed domestic flights in defiance of the U.S. and British no-fly zones. Too, his bid to reopen oil pipelines to Syria and Jordan have attracted business - not condemnation - from the rest of the world: Seven countries, including U.S. ally Turkey, last week flew officials and businessmen to Baghdad for the opening of a trade fair. But even as the Clinton administration's policy of containment has been unraveling, both George W. Bush and Al Gore have been pledging to redouble their commitment to it. Mr. Bush has promised to change the "no-fly zones" to "no-move zones." And Mr. Gore has vowed to do whatever is necessary to remove Saddam from power. But such pronouncements are misguided. They imply that the containment policy can be made to work if it is more efficiently implemented. In fact, the problem with containment is deeper. Economic sanctions and "no fly" zones paralyze not the regime, their intended target, but its subjects. It is therefore no surprise that ordinary Iraqis are more dependent on Saddam for their livelihood now than they were before the Gulf War. This has diminished - not enhanced - the prospects of a grass-roots rebellion that the policy was supposed to foment. It is time therefore to abandon the policy. To be sure, the new administration has an obligation to protect the United States and its allies in the region from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. But it can do this by maintaining a military presence in the region. But dealing with a wily dictator such as Saddam will require some creative thinking - not continued adherence to a failed policy. The Issue. How should the next president deal with Iraq's Saddam Hussein? Copyright (c) The Detroit News 2000. ______________________________________________________ British group defies UN ban on Iraq. A group of British peace activists arrived in Baghdad on Friday, in defiance of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. They chartered a Hungarian plane and flew out of a British airport under the cover of darkness. Leading the group was British lawmaker George Galloway, an outspoken critic of the sanctions. The group did not seek permission from the UN committee overseeing the sanctions or the British Foreign Office. George Galloway, a Labour member of the British Parliament, touched down in Iraq on the first flight from Britain since sanctions against Iraq were put in place 10 years ago. He said, "We didn't notify the British government. We didn't notify the United Nations. We came here as free citizens of the world." The plane was paid for by an appeal fighting to end the sanctions. Mr Galloway added, "We call on the British government and the new American government to accept that this chapter is closed, it's finished, and it's time to open a new chapter in relations with Iraq." The UN says sanctions will only be lifted once weapons inspectors certify the claim by Iraq that it has scrapped all its weapons of mass destruction. Last year, Mr Galloway drove a double-decker bus from London to Baghdad to publicise his call to end the sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. He is expected to attend a Baghdad-sponsored forum that is seeking a quick end to the sanctions. Source: CHANNELNEWSASIA 12/11/2000 ______________________________________________________ How a flight from Kent sneaked into Iraq and beat the embargo. By KIM SENGUPTA IN BAGHDAD. IT APPEARED a rather unlikely flight to cause so much consternation to the British and American governments. An hereditary peer, an MP, a Catholic priest, a charity worker and two industrialists, among others, took off from a Kent airport aboard a chartered plane on their way to a religious conference in Bulgaria. Nine hours later, however, that flight had landed in Baghdad with a grinning George Galloway, the Labour backbencher and campaigner opposing sanctions against Iraq, stepping on to the tarmac. And with that, the policy of Washington and London for an air embargo against Iraq had been blown wide open. This was the latest hole in the campaign to isolate Saddam Hussein through an international boycott. Those arriving on the plane found Baghdad hosting an international trade fair attended by ministers and businessmen from 45 countries, eager to get a slice of the billions of pounds in contracts being handed out to rebuild the country after the Gulf War. Among those present were representatives from France, China and Russia as well as other European Union countries, including Germany and Belgium. The only ones missing were the US and Britain, unbending in their hostility. That is why the flight from Britain was seen as of enormous symbolic significance by both sides in the sanctions dispute. It was the only time so far that a plane had managed to make the unauthorised journey. And it turned into a major victory for the opponents of sanctions after the Foreign Office in London, who have always said flights of this kind were illegal, conceded that the authorities were powerless to act because the plane had originally left for Bulgaria. It had blocked every previous attempt at such a journey, however, and Peter Hain, the Foreign Officer minister responsible for the Middle East, described the more liberal French position on air embargoes as "pretty contemptible." So flight L2-011 was organised in great secrecy. Those on board, apart from Mr Galloway, were the Labour peer Baron Rea of Eskerdale; Father Noel Barry, a former press officer for Cardinal Thomas Winning; Andy Darmoo, an Iraqi-born British businessman; Fawaz Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman; Stuart Halford, of the Mariam Appeal, which raises funds for Iraq; a reporter from The Independent on Sunday and a photographer. There was trepidation, though, at the possibility that the British Government would find out and the flight would not be allowed to take off. But take off it did, arriving at the Bulgarian resort of Plovdiv, for a fuel stop, three hours later. The Bulgarian foreign minister, Nikolai Milkov, was a party to the subterfuge, promising that the onward journey would not be stopped, and Mr Galloway declared: "The air embargo no longer exists." Yesterday morning Konrad Hauser, a German businessman in Baghdad for the trade fair said he found the British attitude amusing. "They are simply losing out by blindly following the Americans," he said. "With the price of oil as it is there are millions to be made here. I wonder how British businessmen feel about that?" Source: Independent on Sunday, 12/11/2000 ____________________________________________________ Iraq says Western planes hit school, 7 hurt. BAGHDAD, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Four children and three teachers were wounded when Western warplanes attacked a school in Iraq's southern no-fly-zone, newspapers reported on Sunday. The papers quoted the Iraqi News Agency INA as saying Western planes fired four missiles at Hmaidi village in the southern province of Basra at 1215 p.m. (0915 GMT) on Saturday. It said one of the missiles landed at Ali Al-Hayaini school, wounding four children and three teachers. It named the wounded as Laith Kharallah, Ali Matroud and Amjad Jassim, all aged 12, and Taleb Jamil, 13. The teachers were Abbas Hamza, 31, Abdulhussein Khalaf 45 and Iman Faleh, 33. It said several houses, the school and a car were damaged during the attack. U.S. and British warplanes patrol no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq set up after the 1991 Gulf War. The agency also blamed Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for the attack as the patrolling U.S. and British planes fly from bases in the two Gulf Arab states as well as U.S. naval ships in the Gulf. Western air raids have become regular since Baghdad decided in December 1998 to challenge jets patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones. The United States, Britain and France set up the northern zone in 1991 to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north from possible attack by Iraqi government forces. The three countries set up the southern zone in 1992 to protect Muslim Shiites in the south. ______________________________________________________ Bombing in Iraq an 'undeclared war' - Lib Dems accuse MoD of misusing no-fly zones. By Richard Norton-Taylor. The government was accused yesterday of conducting an undeclared war against Iraq as new figures showed that RAF planes have been dropping an average of four tonnes of bombs a month on the country. Well over 100 bombs - 84 tonnes of weapons - have been dropped on southern Iraq by British aircraft since operation Desert Fox in December 1998. This compares with 2.4 tonnes over the previous six years. The figures were provided by the Ministry of Defence to Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman. "The continuing operations seem to be more designed to degrade Saddam Hussein's air defence systems than to fulfil the role of humanitarian protection," he said last night. He described the legal justification for the no-fly zone policing campaign, which has cost the MoD over £800m, as "doubtful to say the least". Mr Campbell also called for the lifting of all non-military sanctions against Iraq. His remarks, coming at a time when sanctions against Iraq are crumbling fast, are particularly significant since Mr Campbell is close to the Foreign Office establishment. There are many in the FO who believe that the government's policy towards Iraq is unsustainable. The vast majority of bombs - 450 tonnes since December 1998 - have been dropped by US aircraft which police no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. On all the occasions RAF and US planes have dropped bombs on southern Iraq in recent months they have targeted Iraqi air defence systems. Yet Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, continues to insist that the purpose of the no-fly zones is entirely humanitarian. The zones are not backed up by any UN security council resolution and do not include flights by Iraqi helicopters. Iraq is now flying civilian aircraft over the zones. France and Russia, which are on the security council, recently took part in the Baghdad trade fair. "The sanctions regime is being steadily eroded, aided by certain members of the security council," Mr Campbell said. "If this persists, the authority of the security council and the United Nations will be irretrievably damaged." He said that sanctions "contribute nothing to the policy of containment. They make no difference to Saddam Hussein or his brutality. They damage the lives of the ordinary people of Iraq. They hand Saddam Hussein a gratuitous propaganda advantage. It is time they went." He added: "Ten years of sanctions have driven the Iraqi people into poverty, malnutrition and ignominy and have done nothing to bring Saddam Hussein to heel. Saddam Hussein exploits the existence of sanctions, and he uses them as an excuse. They are his justification for brutality and privations he has imposed on his own people." In Arab capitals, Mr Campbell said, "there is much anxiety and a belief that the Iraqi people have suffered as much as they need to. The Iraqi people are the oppressed, not the oppressors. The elite whose survival depends on Saddam are left untouched." *A group of British politicians has flown to Iraq in a defiant gesture aimed at ending the sanctions. They include the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, George Galloway, the Labour peer Lord Rea, and Father Noel Barry, a former press secretary to Cardinal Thomas Winning, head of the Catholic church in Scotland. Source: Guardian 11/11/2000 _______________________________________________ Secret British trip to Baghdad flies in face of UN sanctions. By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad. THE FIRST unauthorised flight from Britain to Iraq since the Gulf War arrived in Baghdad yesterday in defiance of the British and American Governments, plunging the issue of UN sanctions into confusion. The secretly organised flight is the first successful journey from either Britain or America, the two countries most vehemently opposed to easing sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime. The organisers, including George Galloway, a Labour MP, claimed a major victory last night after the Foreign Office in London, which has always maintained that such missions were illegal, appeared to concede that the flight exploited a loophole in the regulations. This is an embarrassing development for Washington and London, which have repeatedly clashed with the three other permanent members of the UN Security Council - Russia, France and China - over allowing flights to Iraq. Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East, earlier this week described the French position that the UN sanctions do not include an air embargo as "pretty contemptible". The flight, which took off from an airfield in Kent on the pretext of heading for a "religious conference" in Bulgaria, had the backing of the Bulgarian government. Three other countries, Greece, Cyprus and Syria, had also accepted the over-flying of their territory. The plane passed - undetected - through the "no fly" zone to land in Baghdad. During the flight, Mr Galloway said: "The sanctions are morally wrong and have led to appalling misery and death among the Iraqi people. We have always said that they did not cover civilian flights and the British Government will now be humiliatingly forced to accept that." Mr Hain had blocked previous attempts by Mr Galloway and the Mariam Appeal to organise humanitarian flights to Iraq. They did not seek permission for yesterday's flight from either the British Government or the UN. The chartered Falcon executive plane, owned by a Bulgarian company, took off with eight passengers from Manston airport in Kent - ironically a former RAF base - at 8.17pm Thursday. The only religious facet to the journey was the presence on board of a Catholic priest, Father Noel Barry, a former press officer to Cardinal Thomas Winning and a columnist with the Catholic Times. But it was Father Barry who became the centre of the drama when, while the flight was being refuelled at the Bulgarian resort of Plovdiv, a call came through from London indicating that the US was aware of the real destination of the plane. Father Barry, the Americans claimed, was carrying cholesterol and angina medicine, both possibly on the prohibited list. The bemused priest said he was merely in possession of his prescription tablets to counter kidney-stone formation. Another sign that the British and American position on sanctions is weakening came in Baghdad. The city, meant to be isolated by embargoes, is hosting a trade fair with 45 countries, including France, Germany, Belgium, China and Russia, represented. The Iraqi Vice President, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said: "The embargo has started fizzling out, God willing, with all excuses for keeping it in place falling away." Iraq is pumping 2.3 million barrels of oil a day and has granted lucrative contracts to France, China and Russia. Baghdad has also insisted that it wants the revenue from future oil sales to be in euros, and is converting its £7bn current account holdings because sterling represents "enemy currency". Source: Independent 11/11/2000 ____________________________________________________ MP breaks sanctions in first flight to Iraq. By Richard Beeston Diplomatic Editor. A Labour backbencher blew a hole through Britain's air embargo against Iraq yesterday when he led a sanctions-busting delegation to Baghdad on the first such flight out of Britain in a decade. George Galloway, the MP for Glasgow Kelvin, who has consistently championed the Iraqi cause, set off on Thursday night from Manston airfield in Kent on a chartered Dassault Falcon 50 jet in a mission that he described as "under the cover of darkness and subterfuge". He was joined by Lord Rea, an hereditary Labour peer, and Father Noel Barry, the former press secretary of Cardinal Thomas Winning, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow. The visit caused embarrassment at the Foreign Office, where ministers and officials have been very critical of other countries that have allowed flights to Baghdad in contravention of the United Nations embargo against President Saddam Hussein and his regime. Mr Galloway said on arrival in Iraq: "The most important thing about this flight is that we did not ask permission from anyone. We did not notify the British Government, the United Nations, we came here as free citizens of the world to this country that we love." The flight, which was not carrying any humanitarian cargo, was paid for by the Mariam Appeal. The organisation was set up to campaign against the embargo, which it says has caused the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. The men are to take part in a conference against sanctions this weekend and are due back in Britain on Tuesday. Mr Galloway said he understood that he had broken the law by not informing the Department of Trade and Industry before the flight, but he challenged the Government to prosecute him on his return. "If they do, then we will relish our days in court," he said. Father Barry said that he was motivated to join the trip out of a sense of Christian duty. A spokesman for Cardinal Winning in Glasgow said that the Catholic Church in Scotland did not know about Father Barry's visit to Iraq beforehand and that he did not represent the views of the Church. The Foreign Office dismissed the mission as a publicity stunt and claimed that because the aircraft had stopped to refuel in Bulgaria it had not broken any British laws. Nevertheless, the trip directly challenged the sanctions policy against Iraq, enforced after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Because of the collapse of international support for the ban, and Iraq's growing attraction as a trading partner, with oil selling at more than $30 a barrel, countries around the world have been blatantly flouting the UN embargo. President Putin of Russia announced yesterday that he would be sending Igor Ivanov, his Foreign Minister, to Baghdad next week to discuss with Saddam ways of ending UN sanctions and rebuilding the Iraqi economy. Since the Iraqis reopened Saddam International Airport in August, more than 40 international flights have landed. Only Britain and the United States, whose aircraft enforce no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, have maintained the embargo. They insist that sanctions must remain in place until Baghdad allows UN arms inspectors to return to Iraq and verify that all weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated. Source: The Times 11/11/2000 ______________________________________________ Delegation of Greek MPs and "British personalities" lands in Baghdad. Text of report by Iraqi radio on 11th November A Greek Boeing-737 plane landed at Saddam International Airport at 1220 today. The plane is carrying a delegation that is led by Margaret Papandreou and comprises 95 Greek parliamentarians, politicians, businessmen, journalists, artists, and thinkers. The delegation also comprises Canadian, American, and British personalities. The delegation is on a three-day visit to Iraq. The plane was received by Abd-al-Razzaq al-Hashimi, head of the Friendship, Peace, and Solidarity Organization, and the Greek charge d'affaires in Baghdad. In press statements, Papandreou said that the delegation's visit to Baghdad today is meant to show solidarity with the Iraqi people, who are facing an unjust embargo, and to assert to the world that the embargo is unfair and violates international laws and human rights. She condemned the US-British insistence on keeping the embargo. She said that after their return to their countries, the delegation's members will give lectures in universities and churches to explain the repercussions of the embargo imposed on Iraq. ______________________________________________________ Syrian aircraft lands in Baghdad. Text of report by Iraqi radio on 11th November A Syrian Airbus landed at Saddam International Airport at 2200 [1900 gmt] last night, Friday, with an 80-member Syrian medical and union delegation on board. Health Ministry Undersecretary Ali Shannam al-Janabi received the delegation, which is led by Abd-al-Rahman Abu-Rumiyah, an Austrian doctor of Syrian origin. ______________________________________________________ Morocco, Iraq sign 60m-dollar trade deal. Text of report in English by Moroccan news agency MAP web site Rabat, 10th November: Morocco and Iraq have stricken trade deals worth 60m dollars. The announcement was made Thursday [9th November] by Moroccan Minister of Industry Trade Energy and Mining Mustapha Mansouri upon return from Iraq where he delivered president Saddam Husayn a message from King Mohammed VI dealing with bilateral relations. Morocco is participating in the 32nd Baghdad international fair. ______________________________________________________ RUSSIA MAY TAKE PART IN RESTORATION OF IRAQI ECONOMY - EXPERT. BAGHDAD. Nov 10 (Interfax) - Russian companies now have a unique opportunity to take part in the restoration of Iraq's economy, Leonid Prokhorov, a trade representative of Russia in Iraq, has told Interfax. The result of the embargo that was imposed on Iraq is that Iraqi industry now needs radical re-equipment, he said. Therefore, the volume of goods, especially machinery and equipment, sold by Russia to Iraq is increasing each year, Prokhorov stressed. Prokhorov said that Russian Energy Minister Alexander Gavrin (who is also co-chairman of the Russian-Iraqi intergovernmental commission for scientific-technical cooperation and trade) is expected to visit Iraq this December. His visit should promote the further broadening of interstate economic relations between the two countries, the trade representative said. _______________________________________________ RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR THINKS THERE IS NO BAN ON FLIGHTS TO IRAQ. BAGHDAD. Nov 10 (Interfax) - There is no ban on flights to Iraq, Russian ambassador to Iraq Alexander Shein has told Interfax. However, experts say that the existing international air blockade of Iraq is a serious factor restraining its trade and economic contacts with other countries. In this context, Shein voiced hope that air traffic with Iraq may be resumed next year. The ambassador said that, in his opinion, this requires only two things - an agreement with neighboring countries on air corridors and the coordination of certain details with the UN Security Council. "Our companies are doing quite active business. The possibilities for our manufacturers of industrial produce are quite high," Shein said. ______________________________________________ RUSSIAN DELIVERIES TO IRAQ EXCEED $500 MILLION IN SIX MONTHS. BAGHDAD. Nov 10 (Interfax) - Russian commodity deliveries to Iraq have exceeded $500 million in six months, Russian ambassador to Iraq Alexander Shein has told Interfax. He said some of the Russian deliveries contained Western-made goods, but the share of Russian commodities has been growing lately. Shein named as another indicator of business cooperation between the two countries oil imports, the volume of which exceeds 120 million barrels for one stage (180 days). Besides, Iraq "has very attractive projects for developing oilfields," he said. He said some 20 Russian companies have permanent representative offices in Baghdad. Shein said the GAZ car manufacturer in Nizhny Novgorod has delivered ambulances, the ZIL auto plant in Moscow, municipal vehicles, and KAMAZ from Naberezhnye Chelny, heavy trucks to Iraq. The Traktoroexport foreign trader has delivered various pieces of machinery, he added. tel: +44 (0)20 7403 5200 fax: +44 (0)20 7403 3823 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.mariamappeal.com
