[Reader-list] Stand by Iraq, say no to Bush: Siddharth Varadarajan

Fri Sep 13 05:58:35 IST 2002

 Siddharth Varadarajan, Deputy Chief of Bureau, The
Times of India

The Times of India, 12 September 2002./

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?
art_id=21892022

Say No To Bush 
[THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2002  12:00:44 AM ]

THE WORLD MUST STAND BY IRAQ
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

Here¹s a simple quiz to mark the anniversary of 9/11. (a) Who
is threatening to use aeroplanes to attack civilians and
civilian installations like water treatment plants and power
stations? (b) Who is refusing to rule out using nuclear
weapons in his holy war¹? (c) Who is using television for a
messianic propaganda campaign justifying this plan-ned
terrorism? (d) Who is saying his fatwas count for more than
international law? The correct answer to all these questions
is not Osama bin Laden but George W Bush and the US
administration. 

One year after terrorists killed more than 3,000 innocent
people in New York and Washington, the world is waiting
nervously not for another murderous strike by Al-Qaida but
for the bombs the US plans to drop on the equally innocent
people of Iraq. 

Regardless of the scripted dissension within, the Bush
administration¹s drive to open the Iraqi front in what is
wrongly called the War on Terrorism¹ has crossed the point
of no return. Massive US-UK air attacks have already taken
place at al-Nukhaib, al-Baghdadi and the H-3¹ air defences
in western Iraq. The war is already on.

And if you don¹t believe the nukes threat, consider the
August 27 interview given by the ranking US official on arms
control¹, John Bolton, to Fuji-TV. Question: Is it possible
that nuclear weapons will be used against Iraq? Bolton: Since
there¹s no decision on the use of military force, there¹s no
decision on exactly how it would be carried out.¹¹ Washington
says the crisis¹ has been provoked by Saddam Hussein¹s
failure to allow UN inspectors to certify Iraq has rid itself
of all proscribed weapons. News¹ is leaked to scare the
world into believing Iraq has nuclear arms. At the same time,
Mr Bush openly talks about regime change¹ as if it were the
God-given right of the US to decide how the Iraqi people are
to be governed. 

Even on the weapons issue, the dishonesty of the US stand is
self-evident. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 687
mandates Iraqi disarmament, and for more than six years the
UN Special Commission (Unscom) and the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) visited suspected weapons sites in Iraq
to ensure compliance. On April 13, 1998, the IAEA certified
that Iraq had compiled a full, final and complete¹¹ account
of its previous nuclear projects and that there was no
evidence of any prohibited activity. In December 1998, Unscom
volun-tarily pulled out of Iraq on the eve of the US attack
codenamed Operation Desert Fox¹. In its last month of
inspections, according to Unscom head Richard Butler, the
commission carried out as many as 427 inspections and
reported Iraqi non- cooperation in only five of these. The
truth is the US has never been interested in an objective, UN-
run disarmament programme for Iraq. Washington deliberately
pushed the limits of Iraqi tolerance by! using Unscom
inspections for espionage. Rolf Ekeus, a former head of
Unscom, told Swedish Radio in July 2002 that at times,
intrusive inspections were deliberately used by the US to
create a crisis that could possibly form the basis for
military action. Scott Ritter  a US marine who was part of
Unscom and later admitted the CIA used him to spy against
Iraq  has written that Iraq no longer has chemical and
biological weapons programmes. In all of their inspections,
the (Unscom) monitors could find no meaningful evidence of
Iraqi circumvention of its commitment not to reconstitute its
biological weapons program¹¹, he wrote in Arms Control Today
in June 2000. 

Eleven years after Iraq was evicted from Kuwait, the country
is subject to the tightest regime of economic sanctions ever
imposed on any country. Despite the so-called smart
sanctions¹ introduced by UNSC resolution 1409 in May this
year, Iraq¹s capacity to provide clean drinking water,
electricity and sanitation is hampered by US objections to
machinery imports. If food imports and the public
distribution system are disrupted by a full-scale US attack,
there will be a massive food shortage in Iraq.

Every UN resolution mandating Iraqi compliance with
disarmament also explicitly states that Iraq¹s sovereignty
has to be respected. The US flouted these resolutions to
establish illegal no-fly zones¹ over Iraqi airspace and has
bombed the country hundreds of times in the past dec-ade. In
March this year, Iraq submitted a list of 19 questions to UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan. Among these were (i) Can the UN
guarantee the elimination of the two no-fly zones? (ii) How
do you explain the stance of a permanent member of the
Security Council which openly calls for the invasion of Iraq?
Baghdad has yet to receive an answer.

The world has a right to demand that Iraq comply with its
disarmament obligations but it must not legitimise US
contempt for international law. Iraq has said it will allow
UN weapons inspectors back provided they do not indulge in
espionage and work according to a time-bound plan, and also
provided there is synchronicity between the degree of Iraqi
compliance and the phased elimination of sanctions. This is a
reasonable proposal. The US, for its own domestic economic
and political reasons, wants to press-gang the world into
war. The UN must not allow its mandate of ensuring peace and
security to be subverted by Washington. Under no
circumstances must it be pushed into providing
a multilateral¹ cover for US aggression.

svaradarajan at indiatimes.com

--------------------------------------------------------------

Siddharth Varadarajan

Deputy Chief of Bureau, The Times of India

7 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110 002 INDIA

Tel: 91-11-349 2048 / Fax: 91-11-335 1606

Email: svaradarajan at hotmail.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ 