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TITLE: Iraq Questions Credibility of UN |
AUTHOR: |
PUB/ORG.: Associated Press |
DATE: December 27, 2000 |
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Iraq is questioning the credibility of a U.N. force monitoring the border with Kuwait, saying it does not report flights by American and British warplanes as violations to U.N. resolutions. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraq's foreign minister took the monitors to task over the U.S.-British warplanes, which patrol a no-fly zone in southern Iraq and frequently fire on Iraqi air defense sites that target them. The U.N. Observation and Monitoring force, known as UNIKOM, watches over a no-man's land at the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, where its role is to monitor all land, sky and sea traffic and report any violations of either nation's territory immediately to the Security Council. "Most of the warplanes cross the area observed by the UNIKOM posts to strike Iraq and return through the same points,'' Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said in the letter, reported by Iraqi television Tuesday night. "By violating our territories, the warplanes commit sheer violations to U.N. resolutions, obliging the UNIKOM forces to monitor and report these violations immediately ... to the U.N. and the Security Council,'' al-Sahhaf said in his letter. The U.S.-British patrols, conducted since 1992 following the Gulf War, are not mandated by the United Nations and Iraq considers them violations of its sovereignty and international law. The United States and Britain say the patrols - based out of Saudia Arabia and carriers in the Persian Gulf - are necessary to protect Iraq's Shiite Muslim minority in the area from the Baghdad government. A similar no-fly zone in the north is enforced by planes based in Turkey. Iraq has been challenging the flights for two years - locking on to the planes with its radar - and routinely drawing fire. In its reports, including its most recent one Sept. 27, UNIKOM has highlighted air violations of the no-man's land, but has not identified the origin of the planes and has said it could not chart all violations because the aircraft were flying too high to be identified. Al-Sahhaf dismissed that reasoning in his letter, noting the allies "themselves announce that their warplanes have carried out daily patrols in Iraq.'' "Is flying in the no-man's land considered to be an accepted act?'' the letter asked. "If flying at high altitudes is not considered to be a violation, then we Iraqis can do that, too. What would the UNIKOM observers then say if Iraqi planes flew over the same area?'' al-Sahhaf asked in the letter. END |