Maxth av
Iraqis blame U.N.
for childrens’ deaths
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) —
Perched atop cars and taxis, nearly
100 small wooden caskets were
paraded through the Iraqi capital
Sunday in a government-sponsored
funeral procession for children
whose deaths Iraq blames on U.N.
sanctions.
As rain sprinkled down, thou
sands of Iraqis walked next to the
caskets, shouting “Down with
America!”
“There is no God but God, and
America is God’s enemy,” die crowd
chanted as die coffins — many deco
rated with photos—moved along Al
Rashid Street, the city’s main thor
oughfare.
Iraqi officials said the young
sters, some just babies, died for lack
of food or medicine in the past two
days. They blamed the deaths on U.N.
sanctions imposed on Iraq after its
1990 invasion of neighboring
Kuwait. The sanctions prevent Iraq
from exporting its oil, its main for
eign currency earner, and have dev
astated the country’s economy.
It was not possible to confirm
independently the number of chil
dren dying or the cause of their
deaths.
Also braving the rain were the
U.N. arms inspectors who must certi
fy that Iraq has eliminated its
weapons of mass destruction before
the sanctions cain be lifted. .
Iraq maintains it has fulfilled die
U.N. Security Council resolutions,
but die arms inspectors have accused
President Saddam Hussein’s govern
ment of hiding weapons or the means
to make them.
Ten U.N. inspection teams visited
21 sites Sunday and also flew over in
a helicopter for an aerial inspection,
the official Iraqi News Agency said.
INA quoted Maj. Gen. Hussam
Mohammed Amind, chief of Iraq’s
National Monitoring Commission, as
saying no one interfered with the
inspectors during their visits.
Iraq issued a statement late
Saturday urging the world to accept
its invitation for U.N. experts and
diplomats to visit dozens of
Saddam’s presidential palaces, which
arms inspectors believe may be used
to hide weapons.
The statement defended Iraq’s
refusal to allow the U.N. arms inspec
tors now in the country to take part,
saying their presence in the palaces
would threaten Iraq’s sovereignty.
The inspections were called off
for three weeks after Iraq refused to
allow American inspectors to take
part, claiming they were spies. When
Iraq threw out the Americans on Nov.
13, U.N. officials withdrew other
inspectors in protest the next day. The
government agreed to the
Americans’ return Nov. 22 under a
Russian-mediated plan.
Richard Butler, the chief U.N.
weapons inspector, was expected to
leave for Baghdad this week.
In New York, U.N. talks on
renewing the oil-for-food program
for a third, six-month period are to
begin Thursday. Under the program,
Iraq is allowed to export $2 billion in
oil each six months to buy food and
medicine. The U.N. humanitarian
coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday,
has said oil exports should be
increased because the money coming
in does not meet Iraq’s needs.
Tour will promote peace
WASHINGTON (AP) — Saddam
Hussein is more popular in his country
than President Clinton is in America,
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan
said Sunday as he prepared to depart on
a world tour including a visit to Iraq.
Farrakhan plans to leave today on a
52-nation tour with stops in Iran, Iraq,
China and Cuba. He also said he has
been invited by Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat to visit Israel but does
not know if the Israeli government will
grant him a visa. Jewish leaders have
condemned Farrakhan for his past
remarks they said were anti-Semitic.
The Muslim leader, interviewed
on “Fox News Sunday,” charged that
it was U.S.-backed U.N. sanctions
and not the actions of Saddam that
have caused widespread hardships
among the Iraqi people.
“I don’t think that Saddam Hussein
is deliberately starving his own people.
I would think that a man who gets 99
percent of the people to vote for him in
an election and the people love him so
much, how would they love a man that
is starving them?” he asked.
“I think he’s more popular with
his people than President Clinton is
with the American people.”
Farrakhan said he hopes his visit
will promote peace between the United
States and Iraq and planned to file a
report to the White House at the end of
it.
“I hope, when I go to Iraq, that I
will be able to report to the American
people that here’s a man that is ready
to sit down, talk with the American
administration,” he said.
But U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
Bill Richardson, on NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” said Farrakhan’s visit would be
“unhelpful” and illegal under a U.S. ban
on American citizens going to Iraq.
Cities report impact of curfews
WASHINGTON (AP) — A
number of American cities are using
youth curfews to reduce crime and
truancy and to force mom and dad
to set rules for teen-agers.
A survey being released here
today by the U.S. Conference of
Mayors found that 276 of 347
responding cities had a nighttime
*■ curfew. Seventy-six had a daytime
curfew as well.
^ Abramson, chairman of the
mayors’ conference task force on
youth violence, said curfews should
be just one part of a juvenile crime
prevention. He cited survey results
that showed officials in 247, or 90
percent, of the cities that had cur
fews, thought it was a good use of a
police officer’s time. The rest of the
cities thought curfew enforcement
wasted police time.
According to the survey, 56 per
cent, or 154, of the surveyed cities
have had a youth curfew for at least
10 years. Officials in half these
cities say juvenile crime has
dropped since the curfew was
imposed; 11 percent say the number
of juvenile crimes has remained
steady; and 10 percent have had an
increase in juvenile-related crime.
Because most of the remaining
cities have had curfews for only a
short time, no data on the impact on
juvenile crime was available.
U.N. vows to raise food flow
US. forces will remain in Iraq, says ambassador
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top
U.S. and U.N. officials toned down
their angry rhetoric against Baghdad
on Sunday, speaking not of air strikes
or Iraqi “human shields” but of using
diplomacy to resolve a dispute with
Saddam Hussein over weapons
inspections and easing hunger in Iraq.
As Iraqi demonstrators accused
the West of starving Iraq’s children,
Ambassador Bill Richardson, the
U.S. envoy to the United Nations,
and U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan both voiced a willingness to
improve the flow of food and medi
cine to Baghdad as soon as this week.
The powerful U.S. force on patrol
in the Gulf will remain as long as
President Clinton considers it neces
sary, Richardson said. But he also
made it clear that the U.S. priority is
keeping the dispute on a diplomatic
level, even if it means putting up with
temporary Iraqi obstructionism.
“We’re not going to put any artifi
cial deadlines,” Richardson said on
NBC Is “Meet the Press,” when asked
how long the United States would tol
erate Saddam’s refusal to fully com
ply with U.N. resolutions. “Our poli
cy has been steady, it’s been mea
sured ... we want diplomacy to work.”
In a later appearance on CNN’s
“Late Edition” Richardson said that
with the return of U.N. weapons
inspectors to Iraq, “The situation
has eased a little.”
Richardson said the Clinton
administration is willing to consider
boosting the food and medicine
flowing to Iraq through a program
that allows the Baghdad government
to sell oil for humanitarian supplies.
He said that decision would have
nothing to do with Saddam’s opposi
tion to allowing a U.N. weapons team
to inspect presidential palaces for
evidence of Iraqi chemical, biologi
cal and nuclear weapons programs.
“We see that as a separate, not
linked issue,” Richardson said.
“We have had difficulties, but at
die same time, we have to recognize
that the teams have been able to
accomplish a lot,” Annan said on
ABC’s “This Week” program. “It’s
their palaces and their decision whom
they invite, but that’s not what we are
interested in. We are interested in the
government giving access to the
inspectors to go wherever they sus
pect illegal material may be hidden.”
Annan is studying a report by
UNICEF that thousands of Iraqi chil
dren are dying each week in part as a
result of the internationally imposed
sanctions on the Iraqi regime. The
U.N. chief said both the amount and
quality of food going to Iraq must
increase and that new equipment may
be needed to purify drinking water to
prevent the onset of dysentery.
“It will be necessary for us to
increase the amount of (Iraqi) oil sold
so that we can bring a better basket of
food to the Iraqi people,” Annan said.
Richardson accused Saddam of
mishandling the food-for-oil pro
gram and said the Iraqi leader was
using the starvation of his own peo
ple to gain a diplomatic advantage.
“Saddam Hussein doesn’t care
about his own people, but die United
States is ready... to find ways that the
Iraqi people get food and medicine,”
Richardson said.
Annan, however, said the U.N.,
not Iraq, controls the food aid.
“The money doesn’t go to
President Saddam Hussein,” he said.
I
V-—-— --1
Spokesman says Reno weighing facts,
WASHINGTON (AP) — In an
advance attack, Republican leaders
predicted Sunday that Attorney
General Janet Reno would recom
mend against naming an indepen
dent counsel to investigate
President Clinton and Vice
President A1 Gore, and charged that
she would use a legal technicality to
justify that decision.
Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch said
Reno could “hide” behind narrow
definitions of the law, but that
would not obscure the greater need
to investigate alleged find-raising
violations by the White House and
the Democratic Party during the
1996 presidential campaign.
Reno has until Tuesday to
inform a special court of her deci
sion on whether to seek an indepen
dent counsel to probe telephone
fund raising by Clinton and Gore
and allegations that former Energy
Secretary Hazel O’Leary solicited a
charitable contribution in exchange
for meeting Chinese businessmen.
Justice Department spokesman
Bert Brandenburg said Reno was at
work Sunday studying the findings
of the task force that investigated
the White House calls. In the mid
afternoon, Deputy Attorney General
Eric Holder, task force chief Charles
LaBella and several other lawyers
arrived for a meeting with Reno.
Brandenburg insisted her deci
sion would be made based on the
evidence. “The Attorney General is
ready and willing to take any credi
ble allegations forward as she has
done on the issue of the phone
calls,” he said. “Where they are spe
cific and credible, we will take them
forward, where not, we cannot.”
Focusing on the phone calls is
“much too narrow,” said Sen. Arlen
Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
Specter, on ABC’s “This Week,”
said that beyond the questionable
calls, Clinton personally directed
$27 million in “soft,” or unregulat
ed, money into ads promoting his
candidacy.
But Sen. Robert Torricelli, D
N.J., also appearing on ABC,
charged that Republicans were in a
“constant search for a rational for an
investigation.” He said election laws
basically collapsed in 1996, with
both parties taking advantage of
loopholes to pour money into ads.
“To say that the Clinton cam
paign was unique is simply disin
genuous,” he said.
Gore, in an interview with The
New Yorker magazine, set for publi
cation Monday, said he made a
“very big mistake” in calling a news
conference last March and using
legal language to stress that he had
done nothing improper in making
the calls from the White House.
Hatch also contended that “war
has already broken out” between the
FBI and Justice Department attor
neys because FBI Director Louis
Freeh opposes the task force deci
sion not to appoint an independent
counsel.
“When you have a squabble
between the attorney general and
the head of the FBI, you know dam
well that there’s a reason to appoint
an independent counsel and to get
rid of the conflict of interest,” Hatch
said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Freeh and Reno met last week,
Brandenburg said, and “the FBI has
had every opportunity to make its
views known.”
But Reno has said that the law
requires her to find evidence that
specific felonies may have been
committed rather than to refer
“some big blob” of allegations to a
counsel.
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