Response to food for oil deal

By Kathy Kelly, Voices in the Wilderness, 21 May 1996

Today's NYT editorial, A Good Oil Deal with Iraq, lauds the UN food for oil deal as the result of tough-minded American bargaining... and six years of steadfastness by the United Nations. The editorial neglects to mention that the tough, steadfast U.S./UN policy makers sacrificed 567,000 children through their refusal to end sanctions. The sanctions themselves have been used as a weapon of economic mass destruction, inflicting collective punishment on innocent civilians. In the past two months more than 20,000 Iraqi human beings have died as a direct result of the sanctions. More than 10,000 of those who died in March and April were infants and children. Certainly those children bore no responsibility to comply with U.S./UN demands upon Iraq.

We earnestly hope that Voices in the Wilderness, along with other international and domestic campaigns, contributed toward persuading U.S. and U.N. authorities that the embargo against Iraq, targeted primarily against Iraqi civilians, is unacceptable. The food for oil deal, Resolution 986, is one step along the way toward completely lifting the embargo.

Now, Iraq will be allowed to sell $2 billion of oil each six months. Of this annual potential revenue of $4 billion, 30% (about 1.2 billion) will go to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as reparations for the Gulf War. A more modest amount, about $0.2 billion, will go to UN organizations monitoring weapons and to Turkey for use of the pipeline for oil. On an annual basis this will leave Iraq with about $2.6 billion for humanitarian aid. While this is a welcome improvement in the situation, it abysmally fails to meet the needs of the Iraqi people.

Meanwhile, who benefits from maintenance of sanctions against Iraq? The main beneficiaries are oil cartels, oil companies and defense companies which sell weapons countries with high oil revenues, such as Saudi Arabia. Iraq is sitting on a lake of oil and could, potentially, produce 10% of the world's oil supply. As long as Iraq is prevented, through sanctions, from resuming its full oil producing capacity, other OPEC countries will not have to worry about drastic reductions in oil prices.

In order to have the sanctions lifted completely, Iraq will have to prove that its weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated. Eliminating any nation's weapons of mass destruction is a noble goal, but it is an odd goal for the United States to pursue at the same time that this country sells weapons to so many other countries in the Middle East. A 1996 issue of Arms Trade News says that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel were among the top 10 customers for U.S. weapon sales.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark wrote in a May 1, 1996 letter to Ms. Albright: It is essential to our common future that these sanctions be ended now and such unbearable destruction of life never be imposed again on any people Every day's delay in ending these sanctions costs hundreds of lives.

Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the immoral sanctions against Iraq, will send a second delegation to Iraq on May 31, 1996, in deliberate violation of the US/UN sanctions. We invite others to join us by helping us transport supplies and/or assisting with expenses to continue organizing the campaign.

Please note: Iraqis face an acute and rising need for medicine to cure Black Fever, sometimes called Sandfly Disease. The necessary medicine is Pentostam, sometimes produced with the Trademark Tricostam. We will greatly appreciate swift advice about how to procure donations of this medicine.