UN debates sanctions |
http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/04/18 11:39 Shanghai Daily |
The UN Security Council will take up the thorny issue of lifting UN sanctions against Iraq next week for the first time, but despite US pressure for quick action diplomats say the debate is likely to be long and difficult. With the US-led coalition now in control of almost all of Iraq and Saddam Hussein's government toppled, US President George W. Bush urged the United Nations on Wednesday to lift sanctions that have choked Iraq's economy for nearly 13 years. But the lifting of sanctions is linked to UN certification that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed - and that issue is part of a broader debate on what the UN role will be in postwar Iraq. It is also linked to the sensitive issue of the return of UN weapons inspectors. A prominent Russian legislator yesterday criticized Bush's proposal to lift United Nations sanctions on Iraq as "mercenary," the Interfax news agency reported. "We should determine just what the United States is after. Something seems wrong; the approach is too mercenary," Interfax quoted Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the international affairs committee in the lower house of government, as saying. "Today, the United Nations controls practically nothing in Iraq. Therefore the sanctions will actually be lifted not from Russian companies, which should be working in the region, but from Americans, who will be given the juiciest parts of the Iraqi oil industry." Interfax quoted an unnamed Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying that the UN Security Council can lift the sanctions only after UN weapons inspectors confirm the absence of weapons of mass destruction. "The change of regime in Baghdad is not a condition for removing economic sanctions," the official said. |
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