UN Sanctions: An Iraqi Perspective

VOL. XLIV

No. 28

9 July 2001

IRAQ

UN Sanctions: An Iraqi Perspective

The Security Council debate on Iraqi sanctions a fortnight ago provided the Iraqi Government with a public opportunity to air its views on UN sanctions. The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr Riyadh al-Qaisi, made a comprehensive presentation on the subject on 28 June. The following are extracts from his speech, which was made both in Arabic and English. The sub-titles were provided by MEES.

Introduction:…I wish at the outset to reaffirm that the obligations imposed on Iraq under relevant Security Council resolutions are extremely harsh and go beyond customary legal measures to restore international peace and security. In spite of this, Iraq has implemented all the obligations enshrined in the relevant Security Council resolutions. The provisions of the principal resolution – resolution 687 (1991) – have been fully implemented, as required. Iraq has recognized Kuwait’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, its independence, and its borders as delineated by the UN. Iraq has cooperated with the UN and fully implemented its commitments concerning the deployment of UN observer units. It has also implemented all the requirements of paragraphs 7 to 13 concerning disarmament, in addition to other relevant resolutions, especially resolutions relating to ongoing monitoring and to the import-export mechanism…Iraq has returned all the Kuwaiti properties that it could find, and has pledged to return any other material that may be found in the future. A reparations regime has been imposed on Iraq, from which compensation sums are deducted. Iraq has returned all prisoners of war and has fulfilled and continues to fulfill the duty of cooperating in investigating the fate of missing persons. Finally, Iraq has implemented the special demand to condemn all forms of international terrorism…

Kuwaiti Border: The Security Council has involved itself in an unprecedented manner in the question of the borders between Iraq and Kuwait, not only through the formula for the delimitation of boundaries, but also through the imposition of the principles and manner of the demarcation of borders. This did not suffice. The Secretariat has been used as an instrument of pressure on the Chairman of the Demarcation Commission so as to attain the result sought by the US and the UK: the injection of the borders dispute into resolution 687…

Reparations: The Security Council has, in paragraph 16 of resolution 687, admitted that international law is the sole criterion for paying compensation. However, the Council has established for this purpose an unprecedented and astoundingly punitive mechanism based on administrative principles and rules that lack equality or respect for the correct application of law…Thereby, the Council has totally disregarded the well-entrenched criterion of defining State liability in international law…Among the flagrant examples of this is the comprehensive package agreed upon by the five permanent members, which was approved by the Council on 27 September 2000. This package granted the Kuwait Oil Company a compensation of approximately $16bn…Allow me to add two more examples, noting that we had submitted a larger number of examples in our dialogue with the Secretary-General last February. The Bureau, in the case of Government claim no 41, which was submitted by the Kuwait Prisoners of War and Missing Persons Committee, has approved compensation in the amount of $153.5mn, whereas the Kuwait Committee, that is, the claimant, has claimed compensation of about $58.5mn. This means that the sum of the compensation decided by the Compensation Commission is equal to $37mn above and beyond double the amount claimed by the claimant. Is this natural? A claimant calls for a certain sum, whereas that body gives him double the amount and an additional $37mn. Another example among many concerns the failure of the secretariat of the Compensation Commission to verify these claims. Certain UN member states, such as Sri Lanka, India, Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, have noticed that in 575 cases the Commission has compensated claimants twice for the very same claim…In addition to the foregoing…the sum total that was deducted from our oil revenues for the reparation fund, from the start of the oil-for-food program in 1996 to 30 May 2000, has reached $12.6bn, whereas the amount actually received by Iraq from the resources for humanitarian goods, is $12.8bn. Is this reasonable?…

Disarmament: As events unfolded over eight years, it became clear that the two bodies charged with this task – that is, UNSCOM and the IAEA – have served as an instrument to realize US and UK policies. In the former UNSCOM there were a large number of persons who for years went about their work on instructions from the US and not according to the requirements of Security Council resolutions. The register is long, detailed and complicated. Suffice it to say on this occasion that the Special Commission has, in a very clear and unequivocal fashion, adopted a conduct that is translated into placing obstacles, fomenting crises, distorting the concepts of work and emphasizing matters that have nothing to do with weapons dossiers or with those questions that were either secondary or complete, in addition to politicizing technical matters and continuously changing the tasks, thereby prolonging the process by creating all sorts of different considerations…Disarmament cannot take place in a vacuum. Unless the Council in due seriousness takes all necessary measures to deal with weapons of mass destruction possessed by Israel and with programs for possessing such weapons by Iran, the Council will remain guilty of using double standards and selectivity that run counter to the UN Charter…

No-Fly Zones: There are aspects of the relationship between Iraq and the Security Council that have arisen outside the purview of Security Council resolutions…The no-fly zone in northern Iraq was imposed in 1991 and in southern Iraq in 1992. The latter zone was expanded in 1996. In addition, since the official declaration of the ceasefire under resolution 687, the US has perpetrated three acts of aggression against Iraq: in January 1993, in June 1993 and in September 1996. The US and the UK have carried out two attacks: one in December 1998 and one in February 2001. Indeed, since December 1998, Anglo-American aggressive operations have continued without cease, including supporting, financing and training terrorist groups in a bid to destabilize Iraq and threaten its territorial integrity. In this regard, there is a basic contradiction. The Security Council continues calling on Iraq to comply with its resolutions. Despite that, the Security Council has shown no reaction to the coercive no-fly zones imposed by the UK and the US on Iraq without any Security Council resolution authorizing these two countries to carry out these aggressive operations…

Security Council Obligation: The main conclusion, in this context, is that the Council has not fulfilled its obligations towards Iraq. It does not respect its powers and functions as spelled out in the Charter, which have been entrusted to it by Member States on their behalf, in keeping with the purposes and principles of the Charter. This has all resulted from the policies of the US and the UK aimed at my country – policies that run counter to the principles and provisions of Security Council resolutions. Therefore, action is required by the Security Council, not Iraq…

Oil-For-Food Program: Many things have prevented the attainment of the humanitarian objectives of the oil-for-food program. These include the complexity of the measures adopted by the Council for the implementation of the MOU, and interference by the UK and the US in its implementation. We have seen unfairness in the distribution of revenues from the sale of Iraqi oil. We have seen the US and the UK persist in their policy of putting contracts on hold on imaginary pretexts. We have seen contracts dealt with in a selective manner, objectionable bureaucracy in the way that contracts are submitted, delays in preparing letters of credit, late arrival of goods, and an accumulation of money allocated for UNSCOM – even though there are currently no operation costs to be covered. Vast sums are removed for the reparations fund. The principle of good performance in international commercial transactions has been disallowed. We have seen inadequate financial management, as revealed in the report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on just part of the Program (A/55/436). We have also seen the failure of the demining program and of the electricity sector program in the three northern governorates. The Program’s officers and other UN officials have also violated their obligations under the MOU…In addition, is it reasonable that disbursement under a program whose revenues total billions of dollars, billions of euros, should be subject to no external audit by neutral certified auditors from outside the UN system?…We formally call on the Security Council today to undertake an appropriate investigation into these matters…

Smart Sanctions…When the 9^th cycle of the oil-for-food program was almost complete and it had become clear that agreement on an acceptable draft resolution, as proposed by the UK and the US, was impossible, the Security Council adopted resolution 1352 (2001) on 1 June 2001, extending the oil-for-food program for one month. A paragraph was inserted that was to be a foothold for new arrangements, based on the concept of the Anglo-American draft, to be implemented for 190 days following the end of the fist period. Iraq has refused to deal with that resolution for two fundamental reasons. The first is that it uses the oil-for-food program as a cover to push through the Anglo-American formula on smart sanctions. The second is that extending the program for one month is hardly sufficient to implement its two wings: the export of oil and the import of civilian goods…The UK and US circles that advocate this new regime claim that the objectives is to free trade with Iraq from all restrictions, and even to expand it, and to prohibit only illegal trade in dual-use materials. However, the details show the misleading nature of that claim. The fundamental content of these drafts entails a de facto new regime for blockading Iraq. There is no easing of sanctions. The so-called free trade with Iraq claimed for civilian goods has been subject to many restrictions and conditions, as well as oversight by a number of bodies – including UNMOVIC, the Committee established under resolution 661 (1990), the Office of the Iraq Program and the Security Council as a whole – in a way that rewrites the conditions and mechanisms of the MOU between Iraq and the Secretary-General, which has been implemented for nine full cycles. The new regime pushed by the US and the UK rewrites Security Council resolutions, in particular paragraph 24 of resolution 687, resolution 700 (1991) and resolution 1051 (1996). Furthermore, this new regime takes control of all Iraq’s financial resources, places them under UN control and disburses them without any role for the Iraqi Government. Moreover, this does not affect Iraq alone. The regime attempts to control all the dealings of Iraq’s neighbors and subjects them to many restrictions in order to close the vise around Iraq…Finally, confusing the new punitive regime of smart sanctions with the oil-for-food program means that the Security Council’s commitment to Iraq to lift the embargo imposed under resolution 687 has been replaced by an ongoing program that is claimed to be humanitarian and of help to the Iraqi people. We totally reject any such formula. There must be no illusion whatsoever concerning the firmness of our position on smart sanctions. We do not believe that any State or any sane person can expect another State to participate in a project, the ultimate objective of which is to end its existence as a sovereign entity. The Anglo-American plan, the French ideas and proposals and any attendant concepts will entail a full expropriation of the fate of the Iraqi State and people in all fields – politics, economics, development, trade, industry, finance and society…

Resolution 1284: Iraq has to comply with resolution 1284 (1999) on weapons and has to cooperate on the oil-for-food program. Once that is done sanctions will be suspended, then lifted. So easy….I say, "Welcome." Let us see on the basis of the record how this works out, on the basis of your own entities’ records. The Council will recall that when Butler and his team and the IAEA were readmitted to Iraq to do certain inspections in order to report to the Security Council on whether Iraq was cooperating so that the Council could get under way with the comprehensive review, the two combined teams carried out 300 inspections of a total of 427 sites. When the report was submitted to the Security Council, Butler reported that Iraq did not cooperate fully, whereas the IAEA reported that Iraq provided the highest possible level of cooperation. Why did Butler report that Iraq did not cooperate fully? Because of five incidents out of 427. By any calculation, the five incidents out of 427 represent 1.17%; that is to say, cooperation was provided to Butler 98.83% of the time. By any standard that should have at least been considered to be quite sufficient to say "Thank you, Iraq", and for the comprehensive review to get under way. What we got in return was five days of intensive bombing by the US and the UK to derail the whole process. So what guarantee is there, when you have resolution 1284 formally like this – cooperation in all respects in order to achieve progress? What progress is that when the resolution contains the provision that if even a minor official in the field says that there is no progress, then the suspension is suspended. Renewing the suspension needs discussion and approval in the Security Council; yet one report of even a petty official automatically cuts it off. So how do we deal with that? Is it not a fact that some members around this table consider that there are many ambiguities in that resolution that need to be clarified? Some of them are permanent members. Is this going to bridge the gap, really?…

New Oil Sale Mechanism: …The US and the UK brought forth the idea that they will select the companies, according to certain criteria, which will be able to deal in Iraqi oil. No other companies are allowed. In the present system under the MOU, there are oil companies that register with the UN and those companies are the ones that buy. Paragraph seven of the UK’s draft is very vague, but at least it is clear that companies will be selected according to certain criteria, and they are the only ones who are allowed to deal in Iraq’s oil. Do we have any guarantees that those companies are not going to be fat cats of Western origin and be the only ones allowed to buy Iraqi oil? Do we have any guarantee that those companies, Mr [British] Ambassador, are not going to be the ones who will employ that particular facility you give them under the resolution to play havoc with oil prices at the international level, and even to the extent of possibly intimidating OPEC with regards to their pricing policies. You do not have such guarantees. You are not providing any flexibility to Iraq to choose its customers. And you know, with oil, it is a specific and specialized industry; it is not any customer that counts. How do we sell oil now under the MOU? Specifically with regard to price? Around the end of each month, Mr President, the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) communicates with the UN oil overseers by fax and telephone. The oil market is discussed in general, and the prices of Iraqi crude oil are evaluated in the light of the values of the other crude oils. Iraqi crude oil prices are set in relation to price of crude oil in other markets, such as Brent, WTI, Oman, and Dubai. Then, after taking into consideration transportation costs, quality differentials, and other relevant factors, the price is set. What the British proposal would lead to is an intervention in the pricing of Iraqi crude oil, which would entail the complete destruction of the relationship between supplier and buyer. The end result, which is not mentioned in the resolution, is to use Iraqi oil as leverage, because it will be under tight control, and to transform the oil market and maintain it at all times as a buyers’ market rather than a sellers’ market…