IGNews on February 23:
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The departing head of U.N. humanitarian operations in Iraq left the country Wednesday, headed for New York to discuss concerns over U.N. sanctions that led him to resign.
Hans von Sponeck quit as the chief U.N. coordinator in Iraq earlier this month, saying sanctions were not working and the Iraqi people were suffering.
Von Sponeck left early Wednesday for the 10-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan. Amman is the nearest point from which von Sponeck could board a plane. Air travel to and from Iraq is banned under U.N. trade sanctions.
Before boarding a plane in Amman, en route to New York via Vienna, Austria, he told reporters at the airport he would report on the situation in Iraq to the U.N. Security Council.
"We have to think how to lift sanctions which are punishing the wrong target," he said, adding that many of his colleagues who are witnessing the situation in Baghdad share his perception.
U.N. sanctions have crippled the Iraqi economy, leaving ordinary Iraqis struggling to feed and clothe themselves. Von Sponeck wanted the Security Council to separate Iraq's humanitarian needs from its disarmament.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in Australia that he will meet Von Sponeck in New York later this week.
"We will review the situation to see what steps can be taken to improve the situation," Annan told journalists in the Australian capital Tuesday.
Annan said so-called "smart sanctions" may be the solution "rather than making the population suffer." The sanctions target leaders and can do such things as freeze bank accounts.
The Security Council also is planning to review the sanctions, which were imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. They can only be lifted when Iraq proves to the council it has rid itself of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as its long-range missiles.
UNITED NATIONS - The resignation of the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq has again focused attention on how sanctions are affecting ordinary Iraqis and renewed questions about the effectiveness of U.N. relief programs in the country.
The departure of Hans von Sponeck, who called for an end to U.N. sanctions, came at a time when the U.N. humanitarian program was supposed to be improving following the decision by the Security Council in December to try to get more aid to Iraqis faster. While the United States has supported the new Iraq policy, it is wary of implementing the changes before weapons inspections resume in Iraq. Washington has held up contracts mostly to rebuild Iraq's oil industry and power plants fearing such equipment could be used for military purposes.
Von Sponeck, a German diplomat, hasn't commented since he announced his resignation Sunday. But diplomats in Baghdad and U.N. officials in New York said the career U.N. civil servant found it too difficult to work under the sanctions.
IGNews on February 17:
DUBAI — The United Nations' top humanitarian official in Baghdad says infant mortality in Iraq has more than doubled under the U.N. embargo imposed in 1990.
Hans von Sponeck, who announced his resignation at the weekend saying U.N. humanitarian programs in Iraq were ineffective," added that one Iraqi child in five now suffered from malnutrition.
"We have increasing evidence on many fronts. When you look at the mortality situation you could see there is a rising trend, von Sponeck told Qatar's al-Jazeera satellite television.
"In 1991, 56 children under the age of five per 1,000 were dying. Now 10 years later, the figure has gone up according to UNICEF to 131 per 1,000," he said in an interview from Baghdad broadcast on Thursday.
"Malnutrition, I keep saying every night one out of five Iraqi children under five goes to be malnourished," he said.
"We have evidence that mental disorders of children under 14 are increasing. So there is a sense of hopelessness and can we afford, can anyone afford, to associate himself or herself with such a reality? I cannot."
Von Sponeck, a German career U.N. official in charge of the U.N. oil-for-food program which allows Iraq to trade oil for basic supplies, resigned with effect from March 31 saying the program failed to meet the humanitarian needs of Iraq's 22 million people.
Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq who is also German, also offered her resignation at the weekend, saying a U.N. resolution offering to ease the 10-year-old sanctions on Iraq was unworkable.
Von Sponeck told al-Jazeera the state of education in Iraq was "totally inadequate."
"There is not enough anywhere, whether it is books or pencils or classroom furniture....That is the generation that is now in Iraq being prepared for responsible citizenship of tomorrow," he said.
"Today, with an unemployment rate that is estimated at between 60 and 75 percent, people depend on what is given to them and that is humiliating and it does not make for a future of self-reliance based on your efforts to earn in a dignified way a living," he added.
IGNews on February 22:
BAGHDAD - Iraq said on Tuesday that two U.N. officials who resigned this month did so because they saw that the U.N.'s oil-for-food programme failed to meet Iraq's needs and was no susbstitute for lifting sanctions.
"The successive resignations of the senior officials of the humanitarian programme in Iraq undoubtedly uncover the failure of this programme in meeting the minimum fundamental needs of the Iraqi people," Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said.
The officials who resigned were Hans Von Sponeck, the top U.N. humanitarian officer in Iraq responsible for the oil-for-food programme and Jutta Burghardt who headed the World Food Programme in Iraq.
The official Iraqi news agency quoted letters from Sahaf to Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid and South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma whose country is chairing the Non-aligned Movement.
The letters said the U.N. officials resigned after they "discovered on the ground" that the oil-for-food programme could not be an alternative to lifting U.N. sanctions on Iraq.
Von Sponeck and Burghardt stepped down saying the programme, intended to cushion the impact of sanctions on Iraq's 22 million people, failed to meet the humanitarian needs of the population.
The United Nations passed a resolution in December eliminating the ceiling on Iraqi oil exports of $5.26 billion every six months and streamlining procedures for importing key supplies.
But Iraq rejected the resolution, saying it was unrealistic and hard to implement. It has insisted on a complete lifting of the sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
IGNews on February 22:
35 international personalities and organizations urged yesterday world leaders to move to help the Iraqi people and lift the sanctions imposed on it since August of year 1990.
This came in an open message that was signed by these personalities and organizations and addressed to heads of the member states in the United Nations and the UN Security Council.
The message was signed by important personalities among which are Nelson Mandela, former president of south Africa; Michael Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader; Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian president; and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet.
Some international organizations also signed the message, among which are the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Labor Organization, as well as Amnesty International.
February 17, 2000
by Jane Arraf
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The resignation of two high-level U.N. humanitarian officials in Iraq this week brought to light a long-standing dispute over the politics of sanctions and aid among the permanent members of the Security Council.
Hans von Sponeck , the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq and an outspoken critic of the sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, resigned over the weekend.
Jutta Burghardt, the head of the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq, quit Tuesday, saying the latest U.N. resolution governing economic sanctions on the country was impossible to implement without Iraqi cooperation.
Von Sponeck, a career U.N. official, said the oil-for-food program established to allow Iraq to buy food and medicine wasn't enough to meet the needs of its 22 million people. He dismissed as inadequate the Security Council's December resolution that would partially suspend sanctions in return for full cooperation with a new weapons inspection commission.
The resolution could lead to U.N. weapons inspectors being sent back to Iraq and a lifting of sanctions for renewable periods if Baghdad cooperates with the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMVIC). Iraq rejected the resolution, saying it wanted no part of measures seeking to return inspectors.
Inspectors from the earlier U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) withdrew from Baghdad in December 1998, shortly before the United States and Great Britain launched airstrikes against Iraq for its failure to cooperate with the inspectors.
Von Sponeck's criticisms angered U.S. officials, who were happy to see him go. But Russia said Wednesday the United Nations should wake up to the difficult humanitarian situation in the country, and France said von Sponeck should not have been criticized for speaking out.
U.S. cheers resignation
Russia is the foremost Security Council advocate of rescinding the sanctions, partly because it is Iraq's biggest creditor. Since before the 1991 Gulf War, Baghdad has owed Russia as much as $7 billion.
That puts Moscow directly at odds with two other Security Council leaders, the United States and Britain, which insist on keeping sanctions in place until Iraq complies with the U.N. disarmament regime.
"(These resignations) are now already a tendency, which cannot but provoke our deepest alarm," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The sanctions have hamstrung Iraq's economy since the end of the Gulf War. According to UNICEF, the infant mortality rate in the country has doubled since the war's end.
'I am forced out by my conscience'
"I am forced out, that is absolutely correct," von Sponeck said Wednesday. "I am forced out by my conscience, but not by a government."
Nevertheless, U.S. officials shed no tears over his resignation.
"We're very pleased about that," State Department spokesman James Rubin said.
Burghardt, meanwhile, said the suffering of Iraqi civilians is bound to continue because the Iraqi government is digging in its heels against the U.N. resolution.
"We are legally bound, according to what we hear from the Office of the Iraq program, to implement the provisions of (U.N. Resolution) 1284, thereby heading into a collision with the government of Iraq," Burghardt said.
She said the resolution has merits, but she also had praise for von Sponeck: He "cannot be challenged by anybody who has a perceptive mind and heart," she said.
U.N. sources say they don't know yet who will replace von Sponeck, but they say it will almost certainly be someone less critical of the sanctions.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Amid a dispute between the U.N.'s disarmament and humanitarian programs, a second senior U.N. official resigned Tuesday to protest U.N. sanctions imposed against Baghdad after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Jutta Burghardt, the head of the World Food Program in Iraq, told CNN she was quitting over the latest Security Council resolution -- passed in December -- which would partially suspend sanctions in return for full cooperation with a new weapons inspection commission. Burghardt said she could not oversee a program that the Iraqi government opposed.
A 'human tragedy'
The World Food Program monitors food distribution under a program that allows Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine. Burghardt's resignation follows that of the top U.N. humanitarian official in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck. He resigned last weekend, saying sanctions were a "human tragedy" and that the oil-for-food program was failing to meet the needs of Iraq's 22 million people.
The departures of von Sponeck and Burghardt come as the U.N. Security Council is striving to persuade Iraq to accept its latest revision of the sanctions.
The resolution passed by the Security Council in December could lead to U.N. weapons inspectors being sent back to Iraq and a lifting of sanctions for renewable periods if Baghdad cooperates with the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMVIC). Iraq rejected the resolution, saying it wanted no part of measures seeking to return inspectors.
Inspectors from the earlier U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) withdrew from Baghdad in December 1998, shortly before the United States and Great Britain launched airstrikes against Iraq for its failure to cooperate with the inspectors.
Today the country is impoverished, and infant mortality has doubled since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
U.S. reaction
U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin praised von Sponeck and Burghardt as "well-intentioned individuals," but said their concern was misplaced.
"It is our view that they should direct their concern and their blame-casting at the Iraqi regime, which refuses ... to spend its hard currency helping its own people," Rubin said.
Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Saeed Hasan, compared the sanctions to genocide. But von Sponeck said the government in Iraq also shares the blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people.
"I do not think it is fair to make the civilian population subject to bargaining ... (by) the government of Iraq on the one hand and the others in the Security Council," he said.
"The real victims are those who walk the streets of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul."