Iraq

It gives me great pleasure to begin my statement by congratulating Mr. Razali Ismail on his election to the office of President of the General Assembly at its fifty- first session. I am quite confident that his extensive experience and competence will definitely contribute to the successful outcome of this session. I should like to assure him that we are keen to cooperate with him and support his efforts to bring the proceedings of this session of the General Assembly to a successful conclusion. In recent weeks, Iraq has been the focus of worldwide attention and interest because of the American missile attacks to which it has been subjected and the intensive American military build-up that followed in preparation for a large-scale military aggression on the pretext that Iraq violated Security Council resolutions. I would like here to describe our views on these events. Iraq has acted in no way contrary to the Charter or Security Council resolutions or to justify an American military aggression against it. What Iraq did was to move its forces on its own territories and within its internationally recognized borders at the request of one of the main Iraqi Kurdish factions in order to repel a military aggression committed by another faction in alliance with a neighbouring foreign country. This action of the Iraqi Government falls within the sovereignty of Iraq over its own territories and in the context of its duty to defend its own people and repel any foreign aggression against them. This is a right guaranteed by all international covenants and laws. It is also a basic responsibility of the Government of any country. The operation was limited, swift and carried out without the loss of human lives. This has been attested to by all observers, including officials of United Nations agencies who were working in northern Iraq. T h i s operation put an end to the state of civil war, in-fighting, chaos and insecurity in northern Iraq and restored peace and stability to that region. The United States, however, tried to exploit these developments and to use them as a pretext to carry out missile attacks against Iraq and destroy a number of civilian installations, leaving many martyrs and wounded civilians in its wake. 20 The United States Administration was not satisfied with its military aggression against Iraq. The United States President openly announced, on 3 September 1996, his decision to expand the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, which had been imposed by the United States in 1992, from the 32nd parallel to the 33rd parallel. The imposition of no-fly zones in Iraqi airspace is a use of armed force in violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq. It was a unilateral decision that had nothing to do with the United Nations nor with Security Council resolutions on Iraq. This fact was confirmed by the official spokesman of the United Nations on 7 January 1993, when he said that the imposition of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq was not based on any Security Council resolution. The spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry announced on 2 September 1996 that: “There is no United Nations or the Security Council provision defining the basis for a no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel or south of the 32nd parallel. The decision to establish these zones is a quadrilateral decision by France, the United States, Britain and Turkey. There is no provision by the United Nations defining these zones.” As the Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations pointed out on 5 September 1996: “This no-fly zone, from its inception, was not based on any international legal foundation.” The Arab and world reaction to the aggressive actions of the United States has been one of rejection and condemnation. The whole world now knows that the imposition of the no-fly zones in Iraq is neither legitimate nor legal and constitutes an ongoing aggression against Iraq. It must cease. From the beginning, Iraq has been very clear in rejecting the so-called no-fly zones unilaterally imposed by America and some of its allies. America and Britain insisted on expanding this no-fly zone and claimed that its aim, as declared by the highest officials in the United States Administration, was to protect United States strategic interests in the region. I wonder: Is a State entitled forcibly to impose such a situation on another independent State, also a United Nations Member, on the pretext of protecting its strategic interests? Such acts would cause the law of the jungle to prevail in international relations over the law of the Charter. We demand that the United Nations, the General Assembly and the Security Council reject this logic — which is based neither on international legitimacy nor on the authorization of the Security Council itself — and relieve our country of this injustice. None of the allegations and pretexts put forward by the United States to justify its attacks and military build-up against Iraq have any justification in law, fact or legitimacy. They should be deplored and condemned. I would like here to express the gratitude of the people of Iraq for the Arab and world reaction to this aggression and the acts that followed, which were aimed at violating Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. No one here is unaware of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the total blockade imposed on them, which has prevented them from satisfying their basic human needs for more than six years. Conditions in Iraq have reached such an extreme that it has become impossible for the United Nations to maintain the silence imposed on it by one party’s will, especially when humanitarian organizations and United Nations agencies have loudly warned of the serious consequences and harm of continuing the total blockade of Iraq. Infant mortality rates have soared for lack of food and medicine. Disease is rampant. The health, education and environmental sectors have deteriorated. There have also been major effects and regression in other humanitarian fields, in the growth and development of which Iraq had been a pioneer among third-world countries. However, the United States of America, which has been shedding crocodile tears over the humanitarian conditions of the Iraqi people and their need for food and medicine, stands today publicly and blatantly against the legal, balanced and proper implementation of the memorandum of understanding on the “oil for food” formula arrived at by Iraq and the United Nations Secretariat on 20 May 1995. While the professional and diplomatic dialogue between Iraq and the United Nations Secretariat managed to reach agreements satisfactory to both sides, the United States tried to put all kinds of hurdles in the way of the negotiations at each phase, with a view to delaying the finalization of the memorandum of understanding. Then it started to set up road blocks, hindering the actual implementation of the memorandum’s provisions in the framework of the sanctions committees and in the completion of the administrative arrangements needed for such implementation. 21 I would like here to provide some statistics to demonstrate the magnitude of the obstacles the United States threw up to the process of drafting the memorandum of understanding. It is well known that it took 50 working meetings to complete the memorandum — 50 working meetings — from 6 February to 20 May 1996. In the course of this process, the United States presented 29 amendments to the provisions of the memorandum agreed upon with the United Nations Secretariat during the negotiations. Although Security Council resolution 986 (1995) provides for accelerated procedures to implement agreements, it took 80 days to establish the said procedures. During this period, 28 informal meetings were held with experts from the French and German missions; there were five formal meetings, at which the procedures were supposed to have been quickly completed and adopted. The United States, however, delayed that adoption for three more weeks. The United States remains to this day the only party blocking the implementation of the memorandum of understanding, and it does so for political reasons that completely contradict its own allegations that the purpose of resolution 986 (1995) is purely humanitarian. Because of United States pressure and interference, the Secretary-General has so far been unable to implement the memorandum of understanding. This is evidenced by the fact that discussion on the implementation of a six-month plan to provide food and medicine to the Iraqi people has taken seven months. It is not yet complete because of continuous United States interference and derailing of the process to implement this memorandum. We believe that these acts should cease and that the United Nations Secretariat and Iraq should be allowed to implement the memorandum as soon as possible and without further interference. The Iraqi people want to be able to satisfy their own needs, using their own capabilities and financial means. They seek the lifting of restrictions whose sole aim is to starve them and wound their honour and pride. However, like the people of Iraq, a proud people more than 6,000 years old that has given birth to human civilizations, will not kneel before any threat nor surrender its sovereignty and pride to those whose only aim is hegemony over the wealth of peoples and things sacred to them. Iraq is only demanding its right — guaranteed by all international covenants and customs and Security Council resolutions — since all the obligations imposed on Iraq have been carried out and all the reasons for the imposition of these unjust sanctions have been removed. Iraq has fulfilled all its obligations under Security Council resolutions in spite of the injustice they involved. While these same resolutions place corresponding obligations on the Security Council, we have seen no movement by the Council to meet them. We feel, rather, that the Council has abdicated its powers of control and monitoring of the implementation of its resolutions. It assigned that task to the Special Commission (UNSCOM), which it entrusted with the implementation of section C of resolution 687 (1991) and gave sole responsibility to decide whether Iraq has carried out all its obligations and deserves to have the sanctions lifted. UNSCOM has been working throughout Iraq for nearly six years. It has sent 373 inspection teams, comprising a total of 3,754 international inspectors, in addition to its established staff located in Baghdad, which is made up of more than 90 officials. The Commission uses the most up-to-date scientific and technological means and methods, which should have enabled it to accomplish its mission and verify the results of its work. Is it conceivable that this Commission has been unable to accomplish its mission to date? Would anybody ask the Executive Chairman of UNSCOM what has been accomplished and what remains to be done? Is it conceivable that UNSCOM has not yet been able to destroy the weapons of mass destruction once owned by Iraq? What has this huge army of inspectors been doing all this time? They did not come to Iraq for a vacation. Is it true that the documents and equipment which the Commission alleges to remain but has been unable to find constitute a threat to international peace and security and require the withholding of its recommendation that the sanctions against Iraq be lifted, even partially? Iraq has fulfilled all its substantive obligations with regard to the implementation of section C of resolution 687 (1991) on the elimination of prohibited weapons. I would like to reaffirm from this rostrum, on behalf of my Government, that Iraq has retained no prohibited weapons, components of such weapons or documents related thereto. What UNSCOM has been saying about Iraq’s concealment of prohibited weapons, components of such weapons or documents related thereto is based on mere suspicion unsupported by material evidence. Those suspicions emanate from American and British intelligence services and their agents. Iraq has asked UNSCOM to address these suspicions in a practical, objective and apolitical manner. UNSCOM is not a political body to be influenced by the political goals of any one country. It is, rather, a technical 22 Commission obliged to carry out its tasks in a technical and scientific manner free from political conflicts and antagonistic positions. We have witnessed in our dealings with UNSCOM, however, that it tends to act out of political considerations rather than on the basis of technical and scientific facts. My country demands that the permanent members of the Security Council — including the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Arab representative on the Council and one of the largest countries of the Middle East genuinely interested in seeing the region free from weapons of mass destruction — participate directly in the work and activities of UNSCOM and in the evaluation of its work and final conclusions. We are quite certain that, if this participation is carried out quickly and scrupulously, the conclusion will be reached, supported by evidence and convincing arguments, that the substantive issues in this file have been resolved as required by resolution 687 (1991) and that it is now time for the implementation of paragraph 22 of the said resolution. We wish to point out that our most recent experience with work carried out under the auspices of the United Nations has proven that there is a problem with the Organization’s structure. This problem is the large imbalance that exists between rights and obligations, in addition to the prevalence of the logic of force, which is not in the provisions of the Charter. The machinery of the international Organization has been used as a tool to implement the foreign policy of certain international super- Powers and to divert the United Nations, particularly the Security Council, from its natural path towards one that clearly contradicts the letter and spirit of the Charter which, as the organizing document of this Organization, forms the constitutional and legal basis upon which the United Nations must rely in all its practices. The provisions of the Charter dictate that the Security Council shall act in accordance with these purposes and principles when discharging its duties in the maintenance of international peace and security and in adopting its resolutions, whose content and implementation should conform to the principles of justice and international law. There are restrictions that the Council should abide by when adopting its resolutions, which should accord with the purposes and principles of the Organization, so that Member States are able to fulfil their obligation to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council resolutions in accordance with Article 25 of the Charter. The Security Council is not a world Government endowed with the power of legislation and detailed implementation beyond the letter and spirit of the Charter. It is, rather, a United Nations organ that must abide by the legal norms which constitute the legal basis for international legitimacy, embodied in every provision of the Charter of the United Nations. Believing in the principle of interdependence and in the common interests of all the peoples of the Earth, based on the sovereignty, independence and common concerns of States, Iraq has contributed and continues to contribute to the strengthening of the relations and values of multilateral international action. The poor countries of the southern hemisphere are facing a series of attempts to marginalize, isolate and prevent them from keeping pace with scientific and economic developments. These attempts include raising trade and political barriers to hinder these countries’ acquisition of technology and their chances of scientific progress, thereby subjecting them willy-nilly to an economic machinery that furthers only the interests of the large industrial Powers or the rich countries of the North. As President Saddam Hussein pointed out in his speech on Iraq’s National Day last July, the battle of the developing countries is the battle of the southern hemisphere for freedom, independence, development, prosperity and the enjoyment of rights and justice. President Saddam Hussein also pointed out that the United States of America and other international Powers have promulgated slogans publicly calling upon the countries of the South to develop their capabilities and potential, allegedly in order to bale themselves out from underdevelopment, poverty and deprivation. But when Iraq developed its capabilities and potential and used this development and its oil wealth to further its national development and advancement and to enhance Iraqis’ abilities and qualifications, the people responsible for the banners and slogans mobilized, under United States leadership, all the forces of evil against Iraq and attacked it with the bombs, missiles and armies of the 30-nation aggression in order to destroy my country’s infrastructure and one of the new pillars of development among the countries of the South. This places on the United Nations a large and historic obligation to shoulder the responsibilities entrusted to it by the Charter and to ensure the rights of all peoples and countries to peace, development and economic prosperity. The United Nations must be, as its founding fathers wanted it to be, the international instrument for the economic and social advancement of all peoples, rather than an instrument in the hands of a 23 certain Power that uses it to impose its hegemony on the world by force and blackmail. In conclusion, I would like to express my country’s firm belief that the United Nations, through the strenuous efforts of its working groups on the reform of its structure and methods of work, and thanks to the good will of many of its Members, will in the near future again approach its true potential and capabilities to reject hegemony over it and to accomplish the goals and purposes of its Charter in conformity with international legitimacy and in the interest of the welfare and happiness of all mankind.