ACTION ALERT: "Paper of Record" Distorts Record on Iraq Sanctions

September 13, 2000

On September 12, the New York Times ran a blatantly biased front-page
article by U.N. correspondent Barbara Crossette about Iraq's decision not to
allow two teams of United Nations experts into Iraq to assess the effects of
the sanctions. This article is only the latest example of Crossette's
alarming willingness to repeat increasingly shrill-- and largely
discredited-- charges from the U.S. State Department that the Iraqi
government is sabotaging the U.N.'s relief work. (See
http://www.fair.org/extra/0003/crossette-iraq.html )

Throughout the article, Crossette's reporting aims to give the impression
that Iraq does not allow any outside experts to investigate humanitarian
conditions inside the country. The headline reads, "Iraq Won't Let Outside
Experts Assess Sanctions' Impact on Lives." The lead paragraph reported,
"Iraq will not allow independent experts into the country to assess the
living conditions of Iraqis a decade after economic sanctions were imposed,
Secretary General Kofi Annan told the Security Council today."

Crossette anonymously quotes "a diplomat" who says, "They claim they can't
get things done, but won't let anybody come in and fix it." She cites an
anonymous "official" as saying that government repression has "made it
almost impossible to work there." An anonymous "European diplomat" is quoted
as saying that there are "fairly solid reports" that Iraq is exporting its
medicines abroad, with no further evidence given. Crossette writes that
"concern is growing" that "if no independent collection of information is
possible, Iraq can continue to blame outsiders, particularly the United
States, for illnesses and deaths from disease or malnutrition."

In fact, there are literally hundreds of outside experts in Iraq who
regularly collect such information and have done so for years. They include
officials from the World Health Organization, the World Food Program, the
Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Development Program,
UNESCO, UNICEF and the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator's office in
Baghdad. They make thousands of visits each year to water projects, power
plants, farms, warehouses, mills, food distributors, schools, hospitals and
ordinary homes.

The U.N.'s Baghdad office maintains a 150-person verification team, the
Multidisciplinary Observer Unit, to inspect relief distribution. It also
employs a Swiss auditing company on contract with the United Nations to
verify humanitarian shipments. Not only do the Iraqi ministries cooperate
with these groups, but the U.N. requires Iraq to *pay* for the operating
expenses of these last two groups out of the proceeds used to buy food and
medicine.

All of this is documented in the very same United Nations briefing that is
the subject of Crossette's article. For example, the briefing describes a
World Food Program study carried out this summer to investigate Iraq's
system for transporting food. It "found most of the equipment...in a
deplorable state, owing to age, poor maintenance and lack of spare parts."
The investigators were "encouraged to learn, however, that the government of
Iraq was already entering into contracts for the gradual replacement" of the
aging equipment.

In July, a World Health Organization team visited an Iraqi medicine factory.
"The observers reported that the plant would require substantial
investment...to bring it up to international standards." The factory's Iraqi
management "gave assurances that it will cooperate fully with the United
Nations and that observation of its facilities can be carried out at any
time, with or without prior notification," the Secretary General reported.

Several other examples of Iraq's cooperation with UN humanitarian workers
were discussed in the report. Yet Crossette's article, based on the same
report, sought to give exactly the opposite impression.

Last year, UNICEF worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Health on a
comprehensive nationwide survey of child and maternal mortality. Ironically,
the study was reported in the New York Times in an article by Barbara
Crossette (8/13/99). It went unmentioned in yesterday's article.

In a December 1998 letter to the London Independent, Michael Stone, the
outgoing chief of the U.N.'s Multidisciplinary Observation Unit wrote that
British officials, like their American counterparts, "frequently state that
the Iraqi leadership have diverted supplies under this [humanitarian]
program. This is a serious error. Some 150 international observers,
travelling throughout Iraq, reported to the United Nations Multidisciplinary
Observer Unit, of which I was the head. At no time was any diversion
recorded. I made this clear in our reports to the UN Secretary General, and
he reported in writing to the Security Council accordingly."

Other top United Nations officials have also challenged the assertion that
Iraq interferes in the relief effort. Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator
Denis Halliday and his successor, Hans von Sponeck have both expressed
frustration that the U.S. and British governments were putting out
misleading information designed to make it appear that Iraq was sabotaging
the U.N.'s relief work. Crossette has refused to cover their criticism (Hans
von Sponeck, U.N. Press Briefing, 10/26/99; Denis Halliday, press release,
9/20/99).

Crossette's reporting is astonishingly selective. The Secretary General's
briefing, which Crossette's article is based on, is a 90-day progress report
that covers all aspects of the oil-for-food program. Typically, the
Secretary General notes both improvements and problems in the ongoing
program, praising and criticizing the Iraqis as necessary. But Crossette
notes only the criticisms, inflating and distorting them out of all
recognition.

Out of this week's 50-paragraph briefing, Crossette's entire front-page
article is devoted exclusively to paragraphs 11 and 12, which note that Iraq
declined to host the newly proposed teams of experts. She fails to mention
that elsewhere in the briefing, Secretary General Kofi Annan praised Iraq
for improvements in its nutrition program that were made in response to
criticism Annan offered in a briefing last year.

In August 1999, Crossette wrote an entire article about that two-paragraph
criticism, found in Annan's 104-paragraph briefing, which noted some flaws
in Iraq's distribution of food supplies. Crossette trumpeted the comments as
an example of the U.N.'s alleged exasperation with Iraq ("Do More to Aid
Nourishment of Very Young, U.N. Tells Iraq," 8/24/99).

Since then, Iraq has implemented the changes that the Secretary General
recommended. In this week's briefing, Annan praised the government for
having followed his suggestions: "I welcome the decision by the Government
of Iraq to increase considerably the allocations... to meet the food,
nutrition and health requirements of the population.... [The steps taken by
Iraq] are both welcome and in line with the recommendation contained in my
supplementary report."

The praise went unmentioned in Crossette's September 12 article.
 

ACTION: Call on the New York Times to publish an editor's note clarifying
two points: (1) that Iraq has hundreds of outside inspectors and experts
verifying the humanitarian relief programs, contrary to the Times'
front-page September 12 story; and (2) that United Nations humanitarian
officials who dispute the charge that Iraq sabotages the U.N. aid programs
should have been quoted in this story.

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your
correspondence.
 

CONTACT:

Barbara Crossette
Bureau Chief, United Nations
mailto:bcrosset@nytimes.com

Joseph Lelyveld
Executive Editor
mailto:letters@nytimes.com

To read the original New York Times article:
http://www.fair.org/articles/crossette.html

To read the United Nations report discussed in the New York Times article,
visit: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/reports/phase890.html