NOMINATION OF ROLF EKEUS AIMS TO CONTINUE A REGIME OF SANCTIONS, BOMBING AND REPRESSION

January 18, 2000 – Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told delegates of the Iraq Sanctions Challenge that he thought that the nomination of Swedish Ambassador Rolf Ekeus was "suggestive and provocative."

The Iraq Sanctions Challenge (ISC) is a group of 60 delegates from the U.S., Japan, Italy, Britain and several other countries who are defying the U.S./UN sanctions to bring much needed medical aid to Iraq.

Sara Flounders, Co-director of the ISC said, "The Ekeus appointment indicates the U.S.’s desire to escalate pressure on Iraq and, by proposing an obviously objectionable candidate, to continue a regime of sanctions, bombing and repression."

The U.S./UN sanctions have been in place for more than nine years and have killed over one million Iraqis, according to UN figures.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the head of the ISC, said, "The sanctions are genocide. They weaken and permanently debilitate the strongest of a society and kill the weakest and most vulnerable." He added that "the ‘Oil for Food’ deal is simply a slower means of strangulation over a longer period of time. Any extension of the sanctions is unacceptable."

The ISC delegation delivered their shipment of $2 million worth of medicines to Iraq’s Ministry of Health and visited a hospital. From the delegates’ observations and conversations with the Iraqi people, it is clear that the U.S./UN "Oil for Food" deal has done little to mitigate the suffering brought on by the sanctions and the continued bombing.

Dr. Abdul Razzak Al-Hashimi of the Association of Friendship, Peace and Solidarity hosted the ISC delegation. He told delegates that of the $18 billion in oil that Iraq has been allowed to sell since 1996, only $5.9 billion have been approved for contracts of humanitarian supplies. A number of the contracts have been held up by the United States. Dr. Al-Hashimi reminded the delegates that this once prosperous country is being artificially and deliberately manipulated into conditions of poverty and degradation.

Delegates met with Minister of Health Dr. Omeed Medhet. "The ‘Oil for Food’ deal has done practically nothing to relieve the sanctions stranglehold on the Iraqi healthcare system," said Dr. Medhet. Iraq’s healthcare system was considered the best in the Middle East prior to the Gulf War. Now the morbidity rate, the rate of infectious diseases, is extremely high in Iraq, and tuberculosis in particular is on the rise.

"Patients suffer and die in hospitals because there are no spare parts to repair damaged equipment, including such basic things as air conditioning," said Dr. Medhet. The UN committee poses a serious hurdle for Iraqi doctors’ efforts to obtain basic medical supplies, according to Dr. Medhet. He said the committee had approved anaesthetic for surgery but would not allow the post-operative drugs needed to revive surgical patients.

The ISC delegation witnessed these effects first-hand at an Iraqi hospital, the Saddam Center for Children. In a leukemia ward, Dr. Mazin Shimari told delegates that Iraq has a zero percent cure rate for leukemia, a fatal but curable type of cancer, because of the sanctions (the cure rate in the U.S. is seventy percent.) The ward was filled with children who had no chance for survival because of the lack of medical supplies—they will all be dead within a few weeks. An entire generation of Iraqi children is growing up underweight and short in stature because of malnutrition and the lack of adequate medical care, and the hospital was filled with these too-small, too-short children.

The delegation is spending five days in Iraq. Yesterday they visited the Amariyah shelter, a bunker destroyed by U.S. bombs during the Gulf War, killing over a thousand Iraqi civilians who had sought shelter inside. They also met with union and business leaders, who have all suffered as a result of the sanctions: ninety-five percent of industrial production has ceased, and there is sixty percent unemployment among workers who enjoyed some of the best labor laws in the Middle East.

The ISC will return to New York, JFK Airport on January 21.

For more information on the ISC and the UN sanctions, please visit our Website at www.iacenter.org

Contact: Deirdre Sinnott, Kenneth MacLeish. (212) 633-6646

International Action Center
39 West 14^th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
http://www.iacenter.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889

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