Iraq Accuses US, Britain of Trying to Politicalize Kuwaiti MIAs

Iraq has argued that the issue of Kuwaiti Missings in Action (MIAs) since the 1991 Gulf War should be handled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) rather than by the United Nations Security Council, and accused the United States and Britain of trying to politicalize the matter.

The official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported Tuesday that Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Ahmed, in a letter to U.S. Secretary- General Kofi Annan, said Iraq has been focusing on the Kuwaiti MIAs since 1991 and has presented the Kuwaiti side all the evidences concerning the Kuwaiti MIAs.

Ahmed said that the Kuwaiti MIAs, as a "humanitarian" issue, should be handled by the ICRC, but not by the U.N. Security Council, which is a "political body."

However, the U.S. and Britain have insisted that the U.N. Security Council should deal with the issue, the Iraqi foreign minister said, adding that by doing so, the U.S. and Britain tried to use the issue as a tool "to politically pressure Iraq because it rejects the U.S. policy of arrogance and genocide represented by the perpetuation of the embargo and daily attacks."

Iraq has been under a sweeping embargo since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the U.S. and Britain, the major forces behind the continuation of the 11-year-old embargo, have launched frequent air strikes on the two no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at bay.

Ahmed expressed readiness to cooperate with the ICRC on the Kuwaiti MIAs and demanded the U.S. and Britain "to stop using the humanitarian matter to achieve political ends," the INA said.

The letter followed a statement by the Iraqi foreign minister on Monday saying that it was ready to cooperate with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on the fate of the Kuwaiti MIAs.

"Iraq is ready to exert efforts and engage in direct cooperation with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to search for the MIAs and close up this dossier," he said.

More than 10 years after the Gulf War that evicted Iraqi troops out of Kuwait after a seven-month occupation, the issue of Kuwaiti MIAs remains unresolved.

Kuwait has repeatedly demanded Iraq to account for the fate of some 600 Kuwaitis and other nationals who have been missing since the war, while Iraq admits that it did take prisoners of war after its troops withdrew from the small emirate, but says it lost track of them during an uprising in southern Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War.

Meanwhile, Iraq accuses of the Kuwaiti authorities of concealing the truth over the fate of 1,150 missing Iraqis.

Security Council Urges Iraq to Cooperate on Issue of Missing Kuwaitis

Expressing "deep concern" at the continuing plight of missing Kuwaitis and nationals of other countries in Iraq following the Gulf war, members of the U.N. Security Council urged Baghdad on Tuesday to cooperate with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's high-level envoy to resolve the issue.

The council president for the month of August, Alfonso Valdivieso of Colombia, told reporters here that council members expressed their hope that the issue would continue to be dealt with by all sides strictly as a "humanitarian one" and be resolved urgently.

They also expressed their unanimous support for the work of the secretary-general's high-level coordinator, Yuli Vorontsov, and his efforts to bring the matter to a "satisfactory conclusion," Valdivieso said.

Earlier Tuesday, Vorontsov briefed the 15-nation council on Annan's latest report on missing Kuwaitis and third-country nationals, which detailed the lack of progress due to the continued Iraqi refusal to cooperate on this issue.

In his report, Annan had expressed regret that the Iraqi government remained unwilling to cooperate with Vorontsov to resolve the issue on the grounds that it rejected Security Council resolution 1284, which calls for Iraqi elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

Annan, in his report, said he was firmly convinced that cooperation between the government of Iraq and Ambassador Vorontsov could constitute the beginning of a dialogue aimed at resolving the issue of repatriation or return of all Kuwaitis and third-country nationals or their remains.

Also on Tuesday, the Office of the Iraq Program (OIP), the U.N. office that administers the humanitarian "oil-for-food" program, said here in its weekly update that Iraq's oil exports remained constant at 13.9 million barrels, the same as the previous week's total.

The current phase of the oil-for-food program, which ends on November 30, has so far earned Iraq an estimated 1.6 billion U.S. dollars in revenue from oil sales.






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