Kuwait called on the international community on Sunday, December 2 to make Iraq comply with UN Security Council resolution 1382 on sanctions reforms "through all means," the official KUNA agency reported.
"We call upon the countries of the world to see resolution 1382 applied (by Iraq) through all means," Kuwait's minister of state for foreign affairs, Sheikh Mohammed Al-Sabah, said after the weekly cabinet meeting.
"Iraq is considered to be a country outside the law. There are resolutions which have been adopted against Iraq but which Baghdad has not applied even one tenth, Sheikh Mohammed added. "Punishing Iraq for not applying the resolutions falls to the security council," he said. According to him, by refusing to apply Security Council resolutions, "Iraq is opening itself and its people up to damages."
The 15 members of the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1382 on Thursday, which extends the "oil for food" program until May 30 2002, and eases for humanitarian reasons of the embargo to which Iraq has been subjected since 1990, four days after it invaded Kuwait. The program has been in force since 1996 and allows Baghdad to sell crude oil to buy food and medicine.
Resolution 1382 opens up the way for a reform in six months of the sanctions against Iraq and a possible return of UN arms inspectors to the country. It also provides for the adoption before the end of May 2002 of a list of products which could be used for military ends, and which Baghdad will not be able to import without prior agreement by the council.
Iraq will on the other hand be authorized to import freely all products that do not appear on the list, which will, to an extent, abolish the embargo to which it is subjected. On Saturday, Iraq accepted resolution 1382. It has however indicated that it refuses that the Security Council modify the sanctions which have been applied since the Gulf War of 1990-91. — (AFP, Kuwait City)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
