Tracking Number: 220115
Title: "Editorial: Iraq's Continuing Threat to Peace." Last week, Iraqi officials appeared before the UN Security Council to explain the failure of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
to comply with mandatory UN resolutions, but the presentation was not satisfactory, revealing only that Iraq continues to try to deceive and evade its responsibilities while continuing to oppress its population and engage in dangerous weapons
proliferation. (920319)
Translated Title: Editorial: Irak continua siendo una amenaza a la paz. (920319)
Date: 19920319
Text:
EDITORIAL: IRAQ'S CONTINUING THREAT TO PEACE
(Following is an editorial, broadcast by the Voice of America March 19, reflecting the views of the U.S. government.)
Last week, Iraqi officials appeared before the United Nations Security Council to explain the failure of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to comply with mandatory U.N. resolutions. But the Iraqi presentation was not satisfactory. As U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Thomas Pickering, said, "Iraq continues to try to deceive and to evade."
The Security Council has declared that "there is serious non-compliance by Iraq with its obligations concerning its programs for weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles." In addition, the government of Iraq continues to violate resolutions adopted to prevent it from further persecuting the Iraqi people.
As Ambassador Pickering pointed out, the Iraqi statement to the Security Council made no reference to the serious human rights violations in the country, to alleviating the plight of the Kurds and Shia, or to the blocked U.N. efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Iraqi civilians. He said it was "ironic -- truly tragic -- that the government of Iraq should continue to issue distorted, fabricated and exaggerated claims about the alleged humanitarian impact of U.N. sanctions -- which in no way restrict the flow of...humanitarian goods -- while the Iraqi government itself imposes an internal embargo consciously designed to deprive some selected Iraq civilians of food, fuel, medicine and other essential supplies."
Not only has Iraq not used the U.N. mechanism available to it to improve the welfare of the Iraqi population, said Pickering, "but Baghdad persists in actions repressing its civilian population." He called Iraq's human rights record a "compendium of horrors." One of the now revealed horrors is "Operation Anfal," the forced relocations of tens of thousands of people in a deliberate Iraqi policy to erase 4,000 Kurdish villages from the face of the earth. The special investigator of the U.N. Human Rights Commission has received more than 15,000 names of missing Kurds, which led him to conclude that it would be difficult to dismiss the Kurdish claims of some 182,000 "disappeared" persons. The U.N. special investigator said that Iraq's repression of its civilian population demonstrates that the threat to international peace and security in reference to U.N. Resolution 688 still continues.
Ambassador Pickering stressed "that the author of all of this destruction and difficulty is Iraq, itself." He said that the Iraqi regime was frequently warned to cease its aggression and to abandon its illegal occupation of Kuwait. The crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime brought the sanctions upon Iraq. Iraq now holds the key to their relaxation. "By disdaining and failing to comply with the (U.N.) resolutions," he said, "Iraq risks making...yet another tragic and fateful miscalculation, the full consequences of which the government of Iraq will once again have to bear."
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File Identification: 03/19/92, TX-401; 03/19/92, AE-408; 03/19/92, AR-412; 03/19/92, PX-492; 03/19/92, NE-406; 03/20/92, AS-508; 03/20/92, NA-504
Product Name: Wireless File; VOA Editorials
Product
Code: WF; VO
Languages: Spanish; Arabic
Keywords: IRAQ/Defense & Military; MILITARY CAPABILITIES; IRAQ/Politics & Government; HUMAN RIGHTS; UNITED NATIONS-SECURITY COUNCIL; PICKERING, THOMAS;
HUSSEIN, SADDAM; SANCTIONS
Document Type: EDI
Thematic Codes: 1NE; 2HA; 1UN
Target Areas: AF; AR; EA; NE
PDQ Text Link: 220115; 220310
USIA
Notes: *92031901.TXT
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