The United Nations Security Council has taken a step toward ending economic sanctions on Iraq which go back nearly two decades to the rule of Saddam Hussein.
The sanctions were punishment for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and aimed to prevent the country from gaining weapons of mass destruction.
In a statement drafted by the United States, the council on Friday expressed "its readiness, once the necessary steps have been taken, to review, with a view towards lifting, the restrictions" on trade in chemicals and other items that it first imposed in 1991, under two sanctions resolutions.”
It’s a welcome move for Iraq, whose officials have been petitioning for their removal. The country’s UN Ambassador, Hamid al-Bayati, says the restrictions tie up some $24 billion in annual trade in agriculture and other industries.
Many people are surprised to learn the sanctions still exist, including Denis Halliday, who quit his job as the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq over the devastating impact sanctions had on Iraq’s civilian population while Saddam Hussein was still in power.
The sanctions were widely credited for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, who no longer had access to enough food or clean water.
“Sanctions are a form of war,” says Halliday. “To see them go on so long is extraordinary.”
The harshest sanctions were lifted after the 2003 Iraq war, which removed Saddam from power. But according to Iraq's Foreign Minister Hosyar Zebari, the remaining measures are “among the constraints that continue to prevent Iraq from regaining its status as a responsible and active member of the international community and, at the same time, deprive it of the benefits of technological progress and scientific research.”
Iraq will first have to prove to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is in compliance with various treaties barring the development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The council’s action does not cancel Iraq’s obligation to pay 5 percent of its oil revenues to Kuwait for reparations from the war.
Kuwait opposes ending Iraq's debt and has so far successfully lobbied the Security Council to do the same. But Council diplomats say that should change in the coming months as the UN outlines a plan to help Iraq end its costly dispute with neighboring Kuwait.
Content on this website is for general information purposes only. Your comments are provided by your own free will and you take sole responsibility for any direct or indirect liability. You hereby provide us with an irrevocable, unlimited, and global license for no consideration to use, reuse, delete or publish comments, in accordance with Community Rules & Guidelines and Terms and Conditions.
![[QODLink]](http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2012/2/22/201222212586807734_16.jpg "Barack Obama's job - and yours")
