Economic damage could far surpass 1991 war, UN says
After 24 days of economic and human devastation in Iraq, a shell-shocked Middle East can expect a frighteningly negative fallout from the US-led war, according to a senior UN official.
While the 1991 Gulf War is directly responsible for losses amounting to some $600 billion from the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries in the region, the current war against Iraq could trigger the loss of about one trillion dollars worth of GDP, predicts UN Under-Secretary-General Mervat Tallawy.
“A dark cloud is covering the whole world and the Arab region in particular,’’ Tallawy said on Tuesday.
The official, who oversees social and economic developments in 13 Arab countries in her capacity as executive secretary of the Beirut-based Economic and Social Council for Western Asia (ESCWA), said she is terrified of the war’s adverse consequences for the region and its crippling impact on Middle Eastern economies.
She anticipates job losses alone to be around six to seven million, up from four to five million after the 1991 Gulf War.
Other negative consequences of the war will include falling levels of investments, sharp decreases in tourism, increased military spending (which in the Middle East has been twice the world average), increases in insurance costs and declining trade between Arab countries.
Further losses will result from the cessation of bilateral commercial agreements between Iraq and a number of Arab countries, and the environmental degradation caused by the use of highly destructive weapons, including cluster bombs and depleted uranium, said Tallawy. (IPS)

Radiation leak after Marines break into Iraqi nuclear plant
Three weeks into their campaign in Iraq, coalition forces still haven’t found any secret caches of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons — but they may have jeopardized public safety by breaking into a sealed nuclear storage facility south of Baghdad, according to UN sources.
UN sources said they are concerned at reports that radiation is escaping from a nuclear storage building that US marines entered around Apr. 7.
“The marines barged in there, blasted through the seals, opened the building up, breaking these very important containment measures,” said a UN official who is familiar with the site, the old nuclear power facility at Al-Tuwaitha, 20 kilometers south of Baghdad.
The UN Security Council ordered Iraq’s nuclear program shut down after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but Iraq was allowed to keep uranium waste on its territory at Al-Tuwaitha under IAEA seal. The uranium was not enriched sufficiently to be used for nuclear weapons.
A correspondent for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported from Al-Tuwaitha that US marines found high levels of radiation. Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, a Marine nuclear-warfare specialist, was quoted as saying that at one building “the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums; many, many drums, of highly radioactive material.” (Toronto Globe & Mail)

Amnesty Int’l says Iraq oil better protected than people
Human rights group Amnesty International accused US-led forces on Tuesday of being better prepared for the defense of Iraq’s oil wells than of its people and infrastructure.
“There seems to have been more preparation to protect the oil wells than to protect hospitals, water systems or civilians,” Irene Khan, secretary-general of the British-based group, told a news conference in London.
“And the first taste of the coalition’s approach to law and order will not have inspired confidence in the Iraqi people.”
On Iraq’s future, Amnesty objected to leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) taking part in a new government because of alleged rights violations during a civil war in the mid-1990s.
Amnesty said the groups, which have shared control of northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, were responsible for many civilian deaths and widespread torture. (Reuters)

Activists stunned by US debt forgiveness plan
Finance ministers and development activists gathering in Washington, DC this past weekend for the Spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were stunned when a US official suggested that global creditors should forgive Iraqi debts.
US Treasury Secretary John Snow shocked those present when he said Iraq’s whopping debt -- estimated at between $100 and $300 billion -- must be cancelled.
Activists said they were elated that a US official had recognized that debts left from corrupt and repressive governments are intractable obstacles to re-developing a country like Iraq, and that officials should apply the same logic to other nations suffering under worse conditions than Iraq. However, some doubted that would happen.
“It’s clearly self-serving,” said Soren Ambrose from the 50 Years Is Enough network. The US government has steadfastly opposed canceling debts in the rest of the world, he added, “even in cases as egregious as the apartheid government’s debts in South Africa and Mobutu’s debts in Zaire [known now as Congo].”
The Iraq issue was further complicated when Deputy US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress on Friday that France, Germany and Russia, countries that opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, could only assist in rebuilding the country if they forgave billons of dollars of debt owed to them. (IPS)

Groups launch war crimes probe
A multinational coalition of jurists and civil society groups says it is launching an initiative to investigate alleged war crimes in Iraq for potential prosecution by the young International Criminal Court (ICC) or other legal bodies.
The move is motivated in part by Washington’s recent declaration that it plans to set up its own tribunal to try alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the nation that it invaded last month, despite widespread calls for an international body that would also examine US conduct in Iraq.
“Lawyers recognize no such principle as ‘victors’ justice’, the idea that it is just going to be the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein who have to face the consequences of committing war crimes,’’ said Phil Shiner of the Birmingham, UK-based group Public Interest Lawyers.
“In this new era where we have an International Criminal Court and the linking of the penal code of the international criminal statute to Geneva Convention provisions, we think it is very important that all parties to conflict respect and comply with those provisions,’’ he told reporters.
“What is very upsetting to us is that the US has said that they will prosecute war crimes but will really be prosecuting only the war crimes, if any, committed by Iraq,’’ said Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Both sides should have to comply with the Geneva Conventions, but this [US] scenario is essentially a victor’s justice.’’
The US military has been condemned for using weapons such as cluster bombs and depleted uranium in its invasion that have a devastating impact on civilians. It is also accused by human rights groups of targeting known civilian sites and journalists’ offices.
“The international laws that we are talking about are the most basic standards of justice agreed to after World War II: that is, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter, and the Geneva Conventions,’’ said Richard Normand, executive director of the US-based group Committee on Economic and Social Rights (CESR).
“These three major bodies of law represented a coming together of public morality and international law. So the notion that the United States has been arguing recently, which is that international law doesn’t matter because we can choose what is moral to do in this country or that country, essentially opens the field for anyone.’’ (IPS)

Blix accuses US of sham inspections
War against Iraq was a foregone conclusion months before the first shot was fired, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix claimed this week.
In a scathing attack on the US and Britain, Blix accused them of planning the war “well in advance” and of “fabricating” evidence against Iraq to justify their campaign.
Letting rip after months of frustration, he told the Spanish daily El Pais: “There is evidence that this war was planned well in advance. Sometimes this raises doubts about their attitude [towards] the [weapons] inspections.”
Blix said Iraq was paying “a very high price in terms of human lives and the destruction of a country” when the threat of banned weapons could have been contained by UN inspections.
The 74-year Swedish diplomat made clear that he believes he was misled by president George W. Bush.
He said he believed that finding weapons of mass destruction had been relegated as an aim, but the main objective had become the toppling of Saddam Hussein. (Guardian UK)

US bans media from protests
On Apr. 15 US forces tried to stop the media from covering a third day of anti-American protests by Iraqis outside a hotel housing a US operations base, according to a reporter at the scene.
Up to 300 Iraqis gathered outside the Palestine Hotel to express rage at what they said was the US failure to restore order after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Visibly angered US military officials sought to distance the media from the protest, moving reporters and cameras about 30 meters from the barbed-wired entrance to the hotel.
“We want you to pull back to the back of the hotel because they (the Iraqis) are only performing because the media are here,” said a Marine colonel who would not give his first name or title.
The crowd later moved to nearby Fargus Square, where a statue of Hussein was toppled last Wednesday. The Iraqis chanted: “No, no, USA.” (The Age)

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