IRAQ: ISSUE OF SANCTIONS DEVASTATING COUNTRY скачать в хорошем качестве

IRAQ: ISSUE OF SANCTIONS DEVASTATING COUNTRY

(18 Nov 1998) Arabic/Eng As U-N weapons inspectors went back to work in Iraq the issue of sanctions devastating the country was once again highlighted. U-N vehicles accompanied by half a dozen Iraqi cars did a round trip from the headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad, where they visited sites and searched for signs of banned weapons programmes. But the trade sanctions, imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, have hit the Iraqi population hard and one protest group claims hundreds of children a day are dying as a result. About half a dozen Iraqi cars with U-N weapons inspectors set off from their headquarters in Baghdad and returned after their first day back on the job. The inspectors resumed their search for weapons of mass destruction on Tuesday. Eighty inspectors from UNSCOM and six from the International Atomic Energy Agency (I-A-E-A), returned on Tuesday after Iraq agreed to allow them to resume work. Another six inspectors left Bahrain for Baghdad on Wednesday. They returned to Iraq after being evacuated to the Gulf State of Bahrain last week at the height of the crisis. Iraqis are hopeful that their return will bring about a Security Council review of the lifting of sanctions which have devastated the country's economy. Students at the Saddam Hussein teaching hospital said they just wanted the inspectors to do their job honestly and accurately. SOUNDBITE: (English) "They should do their job honestly, accurately. They should prove to us that they work for the United Nations, not for the United States or America." SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop, Student SOUNDBITE: (English) "Just we want honest dealing and honest search. The complete aim that we want is justice in the sanctions and we will go back again to the international community." SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop, Student SOUNDBITE: (English) "I'm not a politician but I think they have ... members and I hope they will put in front of them their children and the suffering people from all classes." SUPER CAPTION: Vox Pop, Student But the sweeping trade sanctions are more than a political issue. They have crippled all areas of the country. One of the first things to suffer through lack of trade is that the country either has neither the money nor the ability to trade in medication. This woman has two children in hospital and she says one of them is in desperate need of an injection. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) "I have been desperately trying to find a special injection for my child for the past 3 days now. And I cannot find one." SUPER CAPTION: Bashira abd-A-Sahab, Mother of ill child Outside the hospital, a group of demonstrators gathered to protest against the sanctions and the further possibility of airstrikes. The group, Voice in the Wilderness, put up a banner highlighting a 1992 study from the British and American universities of Oxford and Harvard which found that nearly 600 children a day were dying as a result. Co-founder of the group, Kathy Kelly from Chicago in the U-S says that the weapons of mass destruction are not bombs, but the sanctions themselves. SOUNDBITE: (English) "We know that the weapons inspectors are here in this country now, looking for weapons of mass destruction. We say come to this hospital. Go right inside that building down to the pediatrics wars and there one will find there major weapon of mass destruction in Iraq today, the economic sanctions." SUPER CAPTION: Kathy Kelly, Co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...