Irish delegation to press Baghdad to co-operate

IRAQ: An Oireachtas delegation visiting Baghdad this week will press the regime for full co-operation with weapons inspectors, while also focusing attention on the continuing UN sanctions against Iraq.

Mr Michael D. Higgins TD, who is making the trip along with Fianna Fáil senator Mr Michael Kitt and an official from the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he would be advising Iraq to demonstrate "total compliance" with the weapons inspectorate.

If it does so, he added, "it will be up to the jury of world opinion to identify whether unreasonable demands are being made of the Iraqi people".

Mr Higgins said the visit would also focus on the "inhuman" sanctions against Iraq, which had contributed to a situation in which the country's child mortality rate is now one in seven.

Quoting a US professor who has studied their effects, he said the sanctions themselves were now acting as "weapons of mass destruction".

The group flies to Amman, Jordan, tomorrow and is due to arrive in Baghdad on Thursday, where it will meet the ministers for health, resources and foreign affairs.

There will also be talks with representatives of the weapons inspectorate, and with UN agencies such as Unicef and the World Health Organisation.

Representatives of the aid agencies Concern and Goal will accompany the delegation, which returns to Ireland via Amman, where there will be another two days of talks on January 29th and 30th.

The group will meet members of the Jordanian parliament's foreign affairs committee, to discuss the threat of war in the region.

Mr Higgins stressed that he was one of the longest-standing critics of President Saddam Hussein, having criticised his regime in the Dáil as early as 1988.

He was also aware that the regime in Baghdad was "using" the results of the sanctions, but said the sanctions were allowing them to do this.

Some of the worst problems caused by the UN embargo arose from banning components deemed to have a "dual purpose," civil and military.

Among other things, this deprived Iraq of access to electrical components for use in water purification processes, he added.

Mr Higgins condemned as "criminal" the hard-line being taken by the US and Britain on the committee that oversees the sanctions. He said if Iraq was to fulfil its obligations on disarmament, the lifting of the sanctions by the UN must be part of the bargain.

"There has to be a carrot as well as a stick. If our aim is to strengthen civil society, including opposition to the regime, we have to end the sanctions, which are nothing short of inhuman."

The Labour TD said the visit would be an attempt to assert politics and diplomacy at a time when war was being made to appear inevitable, and to draw attention to the "catastrophic" potential of war on a country already severely weakened.

Mr Higgins has visited Iraq twice previously, once before the Gulf War and again in late 2001.