Her er Ramsey Clarks brev til FN i anledning den nåværende IRAK-krise,
skrevet 28. januar i år.
Hilsen Knut Rognes
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>Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 19:50:02 -0500
>From: MID-EAST REALITIES <MER@middleeast.org>
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>Subject: Ramsey Clark letter to UN
>
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> www.MiddleEast.Org LETTER TO THE U.N.
> from Former Attorney General of the
> U.S. Ramsey Clark
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> MER - Washington - 12 February:
> Ramsey Clark is a former Attorney General of the
> United States. The following letter was written to
> the Secretary-General of the United Nations two
> weeks ago on January 28th:
>
>
>Dear Ambassador Annan,
>
>The United States government has climaxed months of propaganda and
>threats against Iraq with the statement it will launch a new sustained
>attack using missiles and bombs on suspected biological and chemical
>weapon sites and other targets, alone if necessary, as soon as
>mid-February. It offers as its excuse Iraq's failure to permit its
>inspectors unrestricted access to any place in Iraq they choose.
>
>For the Security Council to permit the United States to take the
>enforcement of Security Council resolutions into its own hands and
>commit acts of war against Iraq would have tragic consequences for
>the United Nations and the hope for peace.
>
>There is no chance that such an assault would not kill innocent
>civilians. While then - U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
>proclaimed it "was impossible" that civilians were killed by surprise
>U.S. air strikes against the sleeping Libyan cities of Tripoli and
>Benghazi in April 1986, we now know hundreds of civilians were
>killed. It is impossible to bomb cities without killing civilians.
>
>In the last three days of his presidency January 17-19, 1993, George
>Bush ordered hundreds of cruise missiles and air strikes to be
>launched against Iraq causing scores of civilian deaths. One cruise
>missile struck the Al Rashid Hotel killing two hotel service
>employees. U.S. intelligence agencies believed Saddam Hussein was to
>attend an international Islamic meeting in the Al Rashid at the time.
>
>When President Clinton ordered 23 cruise missiles to be launched
>toward Baghdad on June 26, 1993, justifying his acts by citing the
>right to self defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, they
>managed to kill dozens of civilians including the internationally
>known Layla al-Altar, artist and Director General of Iraq's National
>Center for Arts, and her husband when a missile hit their home.
>
>The United States has made a shooting gallery of the "Cradle of
>Civilization." People live there. Their lives are threatened and
>some are lost every time the U.S. decides, for its own political
>interests, to attack. When the Security Council authorizes, or
>condones, such attacks, it, too, is guilty of crimes against
>humanity.
>
>Attacks against nuclear, biological, or chemical plants and
>other inherently dangerous facilities violate international law
>because they expose civilian populations to death and injury. The
>General Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution on
>December 4, 1990, specifically prohibiting any attacks on Iraq's two
>nuclear facilities. The U.S. ignored the resolution. On January 23,
>1991, General Colin Powell announced Iraq's "two operating
>reactors...are both gone. They're down. They're finished." On
>January 30, General Norman Schwarzkopf boasted his forces had
>attacked 18 chemical, 10 biological and three nuclear plants. By
>February 4, 1991, a French military spokesperson was reported to say
>the chemical fallout was being detected throughout Iraq. See, e.g.,
>Financial Times (London) Feb. 4, 1991; Medical Educational Trust
>Report, Background Papers, July 1991, p 15. U.S. forces fired more
>than 900 tons of depleted uranium in missiles and shells into Iraq
>leaving unretrievable, deadly radioactive matter in the soil and
>water forever. The U.S. showed no concern for the civilian
>population of Iraq. It cannot be expected to show more now.
>
>The Security Council and the General Assembly should immediately
>admonish the United States that it must not commit any armed assault,
>or other grave threats to peace, against Iraq. It should condemn the
>repeated uses of false propaganda employed to create fear and hatred
>toward Iraq such as the recent false claims that photographs proved
>Iraq tested chemical weapons against prisoners.
>
>The Security Council should announce that after seven years no
>credible evidence has been found that Iraq is manufacturing or
>possesses new nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, and that Iraq
>has the same rights accorded to every nation to refuse inspectors
>that it deems a threat to its national security. See, e.g. Chemical
>Weapons, Convention Implementation Act of 1997. How else could Iraq
>consider inspections of the residences of its President and high
>officials by U.S. military officers who served in U.S. intelligence
>capacities during the 1991 bombing of Iraq?
>
>Above all, the Security Council must act now to end the sanctions
>against Iraq. They are the direct cause of the deaths of a million
>and a half people, the majority infants, children, chronically ill
>persons and the elderly. They are genocide as defined by the
>Convention Against Genocide, and take several hundred more lives each
>day. There can be no link between these sanctions which afflict the
>weakest members of society and any acts of the government of Iraq.
>International law prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon even in
>times of war.
>
>In this moment of crisis, the Security Council and the
>General Assembly must renounce all sanctions which impact on an
>entire society, killing and injuring its most vulnerable members. It
>must prohibit the use of punitive missile and air strikes by one
>nation against another and specifically a super power against a
>defenseless people.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ramsey Clark
>
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