HUMAN RIGHTS-IRAQ: Baghdad Record Lashed By Dutch Foreign Minister

• by IPS Correspondents (cairo)
• Wednesday, November 23, 1994
• Inter Press Service

CAIRO, Nov 23 (IPS) - A United Nations human rights investigator said Wednesday that if Iraq could not clean up its human rights record at home how could it expect the international community to trust it in foreign relations.

Drawing a clear parallel between Iraq's international obligations and treatment of its citizens at home, former Netherlands Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel told IPS the United Nations might pass a resolution condemning Baghdad following a report he submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Tuesday.

"If a state cannot respect the human rights of its own people, if it is not really committed to this...then how can it be expected to live up to its international commitments," he said by telephone from the Dutch capital, the Hague.

"Persistent violations of human rights in Iraq are a threat to peace and security in the Middle East region."

In his report, Van der Stoel called on Iraq to halt the killing of political opponents, abrogate recent decrees providing for amputation of hands, feet and ears, and take advantage of U.N. resolutions allowing it to sell oil for badly-needed food and medicine.

Baghdad is under tough U.N. sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War because it refuses to recognise the sovereignty of neighbouring Kuwait -- which it invaded in 1990 -- release Kuwaiti Prisoners of War and compensate the emirate for damage to property.

Van der Stoel said he would report to the U.N. Assembly on Friday adding that the Assembly might pass a resolution at the end of its meetings in late December calling on Baghdad to take remedial action.

He said the 15-member U.N. Security Council could look at an Assembly resolution to adopt itself. But he would not comment on whether it could be adopted into U.N. conditions for lifting sanctions.

"That is up to the Security Council members," he said. In his findings, Van der Stoel listed three cases of alleged political killings. They were the murder in Beirut of an Iraqi dissident in April, Sheikh Talib al-Suheil; the shooting dead of German journalist Lissy Schmidt with her Kurdish bodyguard in northern Iraq, also in April, and the death in July of a Shi'ite Muslim leader, Mohammed Taqi al-Khoei, in a purported car accident in southern Iraq.

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