Voices rise in call to end Iraq sanctions

IT IS NOT every day that a House of Commons committee, controlled by the governing party, has the gumption to go against its own government. But that's what the foreign affairs committee did the other day. It unanimously recommmended the opposite of what Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy has been doing on Iraq. End, not just ease, the American-led economic sanctions, said the committee chaired by Toronto MP Bill Graham. Try a purely military embargo instead. Reopen the Canadian embassy in Baghdad. It ignored the American macho talk proffered by experts from Axworthy's department: Gotta stay tough on Saddam; gotta keep going after his last vials of chemical and biological weapons; can't get sucked in by his propaganda about civilian suffering; can't be swayed by our own do-gooders climbing the anti-sanctions moral highhorse.

The bureaucrats didn't quite put it that way. But that was the gist of it.

``We were astonished at some of the things they said,'' reported Dale Hildebrand of Inter-Church Action, the Toronto-based church coalition that spoke against the sanctions that have turned Iraq into a giant death camp.

``We met the officials later and it turned out to be a stormy session. They just kept blaming Saddam. They wouldn't acknowledge any responsibility. They didn't seem to care.''

But the committee cut through the official propaganda. It cited United Nations reports that almost all of Iraq's proscribed weapons have been eliminated. It agreed that 100 per cent eradication and verification is impossible. It acknowledged the perversity of a policy that's killing the innocent but empowering Saddam. It concluded that the much touted oil-for-food program cannot end the humanitarian crisis, even if fully implemented.

The MPs reflect a growing worldwide consensus. Only the obdurate now stick to the sanctions mantra in the face of reports by UNESCO, the Red Cross, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the World Health Organization, the U.N. Development Program, Human Rights Watch and others cataloging the horrors of Iraq.

No question that Saddam adds to the misery of his people. But there's no escaping our own culpability in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children and the protracted medical and food emergency.

Not just France, Russia and China have distanced themselves from the Anglo-American hardline but also most of the Arab allies of the Gulf War.

The U.N., in-charge of implementing the sanctions, has been rocked by resignations. First Denis Halliday quit as chief relief co-ordinator, calling the policy ``genocidal.'' His successor, Hans von Sponeck, quit protesting last December's oil-for-food Security Council resolution, saying it gave false hope. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Baghdad, followed suit.

More than 70 members of the U.S. Congress have gone against Bill Clinton. Democratic House Whip David Bonior said the president is pursuing ``infanticide masquerading as policy.''

A rainbow coalition has emerged in the non-governmental sector: the World Council of Churches, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Global Policy Forum, Save the Children (U.K.), International Doctors at Large, Physicians for Global Survival, etc.

In Canada, several groups have joined hands: the Canadian Council of Churches, the Mennonite Central Committee, Project Ploughshares, the United, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Catholic churches, the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations, Canadian Veterans against Nuclear Arms, the Montreal-based Voices of Conscience, the Calgary-based Lawyers for Social Responsibility and the Hamilton-based Global Movement to End the War Against Iraq.

Mainstream media, not known to think much beyond what's fed them officially, are changing. The Economist of London, that bastion of pro-Americanism, has reversed itself in an editorial headlined, ``All wrong in Iraq.''

Axworthy can read the signals. In fact, he's said to have encouraged the Commons committee's dissident report.

He had gone along with the Americans because he figured he could pick only so many fights with them (land mines, international criminal court, etc.) But he's obviously extricating himself. Last week, he released a study assessing the impact of all the 11 sanctions imposed during the 1990s, including the ones on Iraq that it said no longer work.

Axworthy's quickest and most useful move would be to open our embassy in Baghdad to monitor developments and persuade the government there to co-operate with the new U.N. arms inspection team so as to hasten the process, already in motion, to end the sanctions.

Such diplomacy would be more in keeping with Canadian tradition than Defence Minister Art Eggleton glorifying Canadian-American military co-operation, as he did last week in announcing the deployment of HMCS Calgary to the Persian Gulf to enforce sanctions his colleague is quietly working to dismantle.

Haroon Siddiqui is The Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday. His e-mail address is hsiddiq@thestar.ca.