 |
Practical Meausres Sought to Break Embargo on Iraq
The just-concluded meeting of the Follow-up and Coordination Committee has not only denounced the embargo on Iraq, but also begun to seek practical measures to break it, a senior Iraqi official said on Wednesday.
In a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency(INA), Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said that the participants of the meeting not only expressed their defiance over the decade-long U.N. embargo, but also agreed to organize some activities that will ultimately break the embargo.
There have been growing international criticism and condemnation of the embargo, Aziz stressed.
The Follow-up and Coordination Committee, emanated from the Baghdad Conference on May 1-3, 1999, held its third meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. A total of 57 representatives from 22 Arab, European, Asian and Latin American countries attended the meeting. Aziz highly appreciated the "courageous initiative" of Jean-Marie Benjamin, the French priest who broke the embargo on Iraq last month by taking a direct flight from Amman, capital of Jordan, to Baghdad.
Benjamin declared on Tuesday that he will organize another flight from Paris to Baghdad by taking a Boeing passenger plane with much more people on board.
He was echoed by British Member of Parliament George Galloway, one of the participants, who has decided to organize a direct flight from London to Baghdad to challenge the embargo on Iraq. Aziz also hailed the conferences, seminars and activities conducted by Arab and international parties and associations in order to stop the embargo.
Iraq has been under sweeping U.N. sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the end of the sanctions is still not in sight.
Iraq has claimed that as many as 1.2 million people, mostly children under five years old, have died as a direct result of the "genocidal" embargo.
In This Section
|
