BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
As part of its military preparations against the Iraqi people, Washington led the imposition of UN sanctions against the regime in August 1990. It was a total embargo, where any ship that persisted in trying to run the blockade risked being blown out of the water - according to UN Security Council Resolution 665. That document called on governments "deploying maritime forces to the area to use such measures commensurate to the specific circumstances as may be necessary .. to halt all inward and outward maritime shipping."

The U.S. government estimated that the blockade had cut 90 percent of Iraq's imports and 97 percent of its exports and slashed nonmilitary economic production by some 40 percent by September 1990. Widespread starvation was avoided due to a public rationing system, which provided minimum quantities of food to the population.

"A resolution implementing a total blockade that did not exempt foodstuffs and medicines" has "turned millions of elderly people, women, and children .. into hostages of hunger and death," Cuban foreign minister Isidoro Malmierca explained to the Security Council in November 1990.

The sanctions remain in place seven years after they were imposed and after Washington led the slaughter of more than 150,000 Iraqis, while destroying the country's power stations, sewage systems, and factories with indiscriminate bombing.

Here are some of the results:

More than 1 million Iraqis have died -over 600,000 of them children, according to the December 1995 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The United Nations International Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) reported that 4,500 children are dying each month (one child every ten minutes) from problems related to malnutrition and a shortage of medical supplies.

A March 1996 report from the World Health Organization states since the onset of sanctions there has been a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the population has been on a semi-starvation diet.

Scientific studies conducted by international researchers and scientists unequivocally confirmed that Washington has used banned weapons and ammunition enriched with depleted uranium in its military assault against Iraq, exposing vast tracts of Iraqi territory to contamination by deadly toxic chemicals.

Numerous cases of unfamiliar diseases have been recorded, such as congenital fetal deformities, bone deformities, and child leukemia.

A UNICEF survey on the availability of water and sewage systems reported that more than half the rural population did not have access to potable water, while sewage disposal for some 30 percent of the total population did not have adequate services with much of the waste being discharged directly into rivers and streams.

In response to growing worldwide opposition to the devastating effects of the sanctions, UN Security Council adopted Resolution 986, the "oil for food" deal, in 1995. It allows Baghdad to export limited quantities of oil to finance imports of food and other humanitarian needs.

In December 1996, the regime was permitted to sell up to $2 billion of oil every six months, out of which $805 million could be used for food imports and $44 million for agricultural inputs. Agriculture has deteriorated significantly in 1990s, due to lack of investment and shortage of essential inputs. The balance of the proceeds from oil sales are required to go toward war "reparations."

Despite this agreement, Iraq has received only 25 percent of the medicine required and has not obtained any materials for agriculture, education, water, sewage, and spare parts for electrical power stations.  
 
 
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