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“The
sanctions have punished the Iraqi people, but not the
leadership.”
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WASHINGTON,
October 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Three anti-war U.S.
Democratic congressmen on a four-day visit to Iraq on Monday,
September 30, urged the United States to give diplomacy a chance,
warning Baghdad that Washington was “very serious” about enforcing
arms inspections.
“The
message is clear to the Iraqi government and to our government that
war is not the answer. There is a way to resolve this, and the way to
resolve it is for the Iraqis not to interfere [and] the United States
not to interfere with the inspection process which will commence in a
couple of weeks,” said David Bonior of Michigan, second-ranking
Democrat in the House of Representatives, and one of the rare
supporters of Muslim causes in the U.S. and overseas, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“I
don’t think there should be attempts made to make it impossible for
those inspections to work because I think we should allow them to work
so that we can disarm Iraq,” added Jim McDermott, who represents the
state of Washington.
Bonior
and McDermott, speaking at a press conference on the edge of Baghdad,
strongly condemned the U.N. sanctions regime slapped on Iraq for
invading Kuwait in 1990 and warned of the consequences of a new U.S.
offensive against Saddam Hussein’s regime.
“The
barbaric implications of the sanctions are such that the American
people and the world community need to know,” said Bonior.
McDermott
added that “while the sanctions have punished the Iraqi people, they
have not affected the leadership.
“They
have not brought about regime change and my view is that to do this
all over again is simply to punish the Iraqi people more and put our
own people, our own soldiers in harm’s way in this country for a
problem which I think can be handled diplomatically.”
McDermott
hailed Baghdad’s September 16 decision to allow the unconditional
return of weapons inspectors as the “way to go and I think the
United States should allow that to happen.”
But
Bonior warned that the U.S. government was very serious about
enforcing arms inspections.
“The
other point that we have made very forcefully while we were here is to
make sure the government of Iraq understands how serious the U.S. is,
at least its executive government and perhaps the Congress as well
about the need to have unrestricted and unconditional inspections.
“They
are very serious about enforcing that and we wanted to make it very
clear to all the officials we met that this is very serious,” Bonior
said.
“We
think that once the inspectors are here and start doing their job, it
will be difficult for the United States to launch a war,” McDermott
added.
The
Iraqi government “needs, in October, to open up to Hans Blix and his
crew completely so that they can make the verifications that are
necessary in order for the sanctions to be lifted and to avoid war,”
said Bonior, adding, “We’ve got to move forward in a way that’s
fair and impartial. That means not having the United States or the
Iraqis dictate the rules to these inspections.”
McDermott
said for his part that it was better to wait for Blix to submit his
report to the U.N. Security Council after the “not too long a
period” of 60 days, and suggested that former U.S. president Jimmy
Carter come to Iraq to check that U.N. weapons inspectors - whose
return is now being negotiated - were able to do their work
unhindered.
News
agencies report that McDermott said Carter, a Democrat known for his
work monitoring elections and encouraging the democratic process,
should come to Iraq to “look in and verify whether the [U.N. arms]
inspections are being done in a proper manner or not.”
The
New York Times reported that McDermott said he thought U.S. President
George W. Bush was willing “to mislead the American people” about
whether the war was needed and that the administration had gone back
and forth between citing supposed links between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda
network and Iraq’s supposed attempts to obtain weapons of mass
destruction.
“I
believe that sometimes they give out misinformation,” he said,
adding, “It would not surprise me if they came up with some
information that is not provable, and they’ve shifted. First they
said it was Al-Qaeda, then they said it was weapons of mass
destruction. Now they’re going back and saying it’s Al-Qaeda
again.”
“The
American people are not with one voice on Iraq and they are debating
about it like the rest of the world,” McDermott said Monday, adding
that the U.S. Congress would not be unanimous on granting Bush the
power to hit Iraq.
U.S.
lawmakers are debating the language of a draft resolution Bush has
asked them to pass, granting him the authority to “use all means”
to disarm Iraq, which Washington accuses of developing anew weapons of
mass destruction.
Bush’s
administration argues that toppling Saddam Hussein may be the best way
to ensure Iraq disarms.
Iraq
says it has no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraqi officials began
talks with Blix in Vienna on Monday on the return of weapons
inspectors to Baghdad after an absence of nearly four years.
While
many opposition Democrats have questioned what they see as Bush’s
headlong rush to war, others said Washington must stand firm in
demanding unfettered access to Iraqi sites.
“War
should always be the last option,” Mike Thompson of California said
later after meeting with some Iraqi MPs.
But
“to avoid war, Saddam Hussein is going to have to allow the weapons
inspectors free and open access to every square inch of this
country,” Thompson warned.
“We
recognize that Saddam Hussein had done things in the past that are
totally unacceptable with weapons of mass destruction, but we want
today to disarm him not to have regime change which requires war.
Disarming can be done diplomatically,” McDermott added.
Two
non-profit groups, the Seattle-based Church Council and the Life
Foundation of Detroit, asked Bonior, McDermott and Thompson to report
on the humanitarian situation in Iraq.
The
three Congressmen, who arrived in Baghdad on Friday, have met Deputy
Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and Health
Minister Omid Medhat Mubarak.
Bonior
said their visit, which ended Monday, was "to bear witness to
what we have read and heard for so many years and to do everything we
can to make the humanitarian crises in Iraq known to the rest of the
world."
McDermott
added that the 12-year-old U.N. trade sanctions imposed on Iraq for
its 1990 invasion of Kuwait were punishing the Iraqi people, not the
government.
“The
death rate for children under five is a 100 percent increase. Fifty
thousand children a year die prematurely because of sanctions,” he
said.
“The
sanctions have punished the Iraqi people, but not the leadership.”
