[Peace-discuss] US blocks aid plane to Iraq, taps frozen Iraqi assets to pay Iraqis

[Ricky Baldwin]

[It would be easy to wax paranoid over stories like
this first one, but we should recall that UN aid
agencies have insisted that Iraqis face a humanitarian
disaster since before the fall of Baghdad, and
expressed "alam" at the high rate of civilian deaths. 
I think we should see this article in the context of
the overflowing hospitals - mostly not functioning -
and the yellow 'bomblets' that resemble the rations
being handed out, like in Afghanistan. The second
article, I think, needs little comment. - RB]

British Aid Plane Prevented from Entering Iraq

April 17, 2003

By Kate Holton 

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. forces have refused a Save the
Children plane permission to land in northern Iraq to
deliver aid, breaching the Geneva Convention and
"costing children their lives," the British aid agency
said on Thursday. 

Save the Children said in a statement it had been
trying for more than a week to land a plane in Arbil
carrying enough medical supplies to treat 40,000
people and emergency feeding kits for malnourished
children. 

A U.S. official told the charity no aid flights would
be allowed until the area was safe but the U.N. has
already declared Arbil a "safe and secure" area, the
charity said. 

"The doctors we are trying to help have been
struggling against the odds for weeks to continue
saving lives, but now the help we have promised them
is being endlessly delayed," Emergency Program Manager
Rob MacGillivray said. 

"The lack of cooperation from the U.S. military is a
breach of the Geneva Conventions and its protocols but
more importantly the time now being wasted is costing
children their lives." 

U.S. officials were not immediately available for
comment. 

Under the Geneva Convention, occupying forces are
obliged to protect civilians, restore law and order
and open up space for humanitarian relief. 

A spokeswoman for Save the Children told Reuters the
plane would also carry medical officials. She said the
charity had already taken vehicles into Arbil with
money for hospitals but they now needed medical
supplies. 

The charity, who said the hospitals did not have
sufficient water or power, also said the staff at one
hospital had been forced to combat looters as they
continued to work throughout fighting in the city. 

Aid officials say Iraq is in desperate need of medical
and food deliveries following a month of fighting and
years of economic sanctions and misrule. 

U.S. war commander General Tommy Franks said on
Thursday that law and order was returning to Iraq
following a wave of looting and that his forces were
now firmly focused on aid and humanitarian operations.


Prior to the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, 60 percent of
Iraq's 26 million people depended directly on a
U.N.-backed oil-for-food program, which allowed
proceeds from Iraq's oil to be used to buy food while
the country was under international economic
sanctions. 

U.S. Flies in Millions of Dollars for Iraq

April 17, 2003

KUWAIT (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve is flying
in millions of dollars to pay 
Iraqi civil servants and start rebuilding Iraq, a U.S.
official said on Thursday. 

Using $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets seized in
the United States, Washington is set to start
$20-per-head payments within days to up to 2.5 million
Iraqi civil servants. 

"When you are flying in planes that have millions on
them, you don't want to discuss timing or when and
where," the official told Reuters. 

"The money, and it is millions, is mainly to pay civil
servant salaries, but some of it will go for
reconstruction." 

Analysts have said it could cost $100 billion to
rebuild Iraq, a country battered by two wars in two
decades and 12 years of United Nations sanctions. 

Iraq, which sits on the world's second largest oil
reserves, needs quick infusions of cash because it
cannot resume oil exports without legal sanction from
the United Nations. 

The U.S. official said the Fed was in charge of
providing the cash and could not say if more shipments
were scheduled. 

U.S. officials said on Wednesday that the $20 payments
to civil servants will be critical to getting the
economy moving again. Iraqis will have to cope with a
hotchpotch of currencies including the dollar, other
western currencies and the Saddam-era dinar for some
time until a new Iraqi authority can implement a new
currency, they added. 



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