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Consensus Reached Over Need to Revise Sanctions on Iraq: French FM
Member states of the United Nations Security Council have reached a consensus over the need to revise the 10-year-old sanctions against Iraq, said French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine on Thursday.
"Nobody considers that the present policy is good as far as the 10-year-old sanctions against Iraq are concerned... Nobody and none of the members of the Security Council considers that the present situation is satisfactory," he said after meeting his Norwegian counterpart Thorbjoern Jagland.
Norway, which sits in the Security Council since the beginning of this year and currently chairs the U.N. commission of sanctions against Iraq, has proposed changing the sanction policy to alleviate its impact on Iraqi people while being more efficient on the Iraqi regime.
Vedrine said that discussions have started between the United States and Britain over the issue and that he will talk with his American and British counterparts Colin Powell and Robin Cook at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on February 27.
He said that France prefers to abandon the concept of sanctions and replace it with that of "international vigilance" and " international control" against Baghdad and its armaments projects banned by the United Nations.
"What we really need now is a policy which will in no way let the Iraqi people suffer," he added.
For his part, Jagland said that the United Nations should improve the humanitarian situation in Iraq, otherwise the sanctions can no longer be explained and justified at the international level.
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