21 September 1999Albright Meets With Iraqi Opposition Leaders
(US urged not to ease pressure on Saddam Hussein) (1160) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent New York -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with Iraqi opposition leaders September 20 discussing possible ways the international community can ease the suffering of the Iraqi people while ensuring that the country's wealth is not used by Saddam Hussein to build palaces and weapons. Albright, who is attending the opening session of the 54th General Assembly, met with 19 members of the Iraqi people's delegation, a group of opposition leaders who are in New York to lobby foreign ministers attending the assembly and to talk about their first-hand experiences with Saddam Hussein's continuing repression of the Iraqi people. Albright was pleased to meet with the delegation, State Department spokesman James Rubin said in a brief statement after the meeting. "The most important thing for any captive people is to have a voice. The Baghdad regime has tried hard to silence the Iraqi people and to hide the evidence of its crimes against them. This courageous group ... has shown that Saddam Hussein has failed," Rubin said. Rubin said that the United States is particularly pleased that other delegations, including those from the Middle East and Europe, will be meeting with members of the Iraqi people's delegation over the next two weeks. In a statement following the meeting, Riyadh Al-Yawer, spokesman for the Iraqi group, said the members were grateful for Albright's efforts to compel the Iraqi regime to abide by the U.N. resolutions that protect the people of Iraq and U.S. efforts to expose the brutal and repressive nature of the Iraqi regime. AL-Yawer said that the significance of the large number of opposition leaders who will be gathering in New York over the next two weeks is that the group is from "the full mosaic of Iraqi society who have united to give the captive people of Iraq a voice." The Security Council is currently discussing an omnibus resolution that would replace the nine-year-old cease-fire resolutions. The majority of the 15 council members support a British/Dutch draft that would restate the need for Saddam Hussein to destroy his weapons of mass destruction and their related programs and for sanctions to remain in place until Iraq complies. The foreign ministers of China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States -- the permanent members of the council who hold veto powers -- are expected to meet to discuss the draft while the five are attending the UN session. Negotiations on the resolution have taken months since consensus in the council broke down on how to proceed with the disarmament and sanctions late last year. For the United States, "bottom line is there has to be compliance if there is going to be any adjustment in the way the sanctions are operating, but in no case prior to full compliance should there be any change in the fact that the Saddam Hussein regime should not have access to resources," a U.S. official said. The United States hopes the resolutions under consideration will re-establish consensus, "but not at the cost of allowing Saddam Hussein off the hook and that is the challenge" of the ongoing negotiations, the official said. The Iraqi people's delegation "will urge that the caps on the exports of oil under the oil-for-food program be lifted as long as the increased funds continue to flow through the United Nations escrow account. We will vigorously oppose one more penny being put in the hands of Saddam Hussein," Al-Yawer said. During her meeting with the delegation, Albright had a lively conversation with the Iraqis asking "what is it like inside; what do the Iraqi people really want; how do they see the outside world; how do they feel about the U.N. sanctions regime and what other countries are doing and what the United States is doing," a senior official who attended the meeting said. "They were quite emphatic on several points: They want the support of the outside world. They are grateful for the support they have gotten from us but they want attention from other countries as well," said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Iraqi opposition leaders are "deeply, deeply concerned about the suffering of their fellow countrymen. They attribute the suffering, without any hesitation, to the regime they are forced to live under. They do not blame the United Nations; they do not blame the United States," the U.S. official said. The leaders told Albright that they regard Iraq's wealth as their wealth -- the people's wealth -- that should go to building hospitals, schools, roads, airports and other such things and not toward Saddam Hussein's palaces, much less weapons that are often turned against their own people, the U.S. official said. The delegation is the leading edge of a large group of Iraqis who wish to advocate for the Iraqi people in New York. Some left Iraq a few days ago, others live in exile but are in close communication with friends, relatives, and business associates inside the country. They include representatives of religious and secular groups and all segments of the political spectrum in Iraq who are working together against the regime, the U.S. official said. But while a wide variety of groups are represented, there is "no variety of opinion what needs to be done," the U.S. official said. "They know Iraq will never really recover as long as (Saddam Hussein) regime is there and perverting the economy to its own ends," the official said. "Speaker after speaker in the meeting, (referring to) press reports out of London that we may be weakening, said please don't even consider giving a dollar to Saddam Hussein." "Find a way of relieving the burden of the sanctions, get more U.N. monitors in there, lift the caps on oil sales, but make sure none of the proceeds go to Saddam Hussein," the U.S. official said. In its press statement, the group, which calls itself the Iraqi National Congress and the Centrist Democratic Movement, said the members would be asking U.N. delegations to send human rights monitors throughout Iraq, resume weapons inspections, enhance the U.N. role in defining the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, broaden and strengthen no-fly and no-drive zones, and ask the Security Council to establish an Iraqi War Crimes Tribunal to investigate Saddam Hussein and his inner circle for genocide, torture and crimes against humanity. Members of the Iraqi delegation include Jalal Talabani, general secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; Aziz Aliyan, member of the INC Executive Council; Talib Al-Bayati, representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Aziz Qadir Samanchi of the Turkuman Democratic Movement; Izzet Shabander, an independent Islamist now in exile in Syria; Ayad Allawi, secretary general of the Iraqi National Accord, and Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement.
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