US Says Need for Sanctions on Iraq Has Gone

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 18, 2003

US Says Need for Sanctions on Iraq Has Gone

The United States said Thursday that the need for maintaining broad economic sanctions onIraq has gone because President Saddam Hussein's government has been toppled.

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The United States said Thursday that the need for maintaining broad economic sanctions onIraq has gone because President Saddam Hussein's government has been toppled.

"One has to accept the fact that with the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, the need for economic sanctions goes away," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a news briefing.

"It should be fairly obvious to everybody that we're not in thesame situation that we were a month or two ago, or several years ago when other (UN Security Council) resolutions were passed," hesaid.

Boucher admitted that under the current UN resolutions, a declaration that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction is neededin order to lift economic sanctions imposed shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

He said the sanctions would be lifted by a new UN Security Council resolution and Washington is going to discuss with others members of the council on how to move forward.

"We'll be discussing this with other members of the Security Council, and the Security Council will decide in a new resolution what it wants to do with this regard," the spokesman said.

US President George W. Bush made an appeal on Wednesday urging the United Nations to lift the sanctions on Iraq, including an oilembargo. But the appeal has received cold response from the international community.

Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, reportedly said that it is against any "automated" lifting of the sanctions which requires the declaration that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has made Baghdad's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction a major pretext for waging the ongoing war, but it has so far failed to prove its accusations although the US-led forces are controlling the entire territory of Iraq.

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