Iraq, 1996

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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.