|
INLAP Dossier
|
|
DOSSIER published by the Institute for Law and Peace, 22.02.03 Defending the Charter The United Nations is not above the Law The Security Council can take "Adequate Measures" short of war. Edited by George Farebrother and Kitty McVey Dossier financed by proceeds from the Ted Dunn Memorial Fund Enquiries to George Farebrother 01323 844 269 geowcpuk@gn.apc.org or Kitty McVey 020 8650 8843 kitty@kmcvey.freeserve.co.uk Company Secretary: Vijay Mehta, 12-14 Cavell Street, London E1 2HP Company No. 2526884, Charity No. 1000444 ___________ SUMMARY: THE UN CHARTER DOES NOT AUTHORISE THIS WAR WITH IRAQ. Kitty McVey. 22nd February 2003. PAPER A: WAR, THE UN AND THE LAW. Peter Carter QC, Chairman Bar Human Rights Committee. The Guardian, Letters, 13th February 2003 PAPER B: WHY INTERNATIONAL LAW MATTERS (extracts).
PAPER C: SECOND RESOLUTION: DEFEND THE UN CHARTER. Milan Rai. PAPER D: FORGOTTEN TRUTHS. John Roberts, Chair, Institute for Law and Peace. PAPER E: IRAQ CRISIS: DIPLOMACY: "CONFLICT WOULD BE DEEMED ILLEGAL"
PAPER F: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "PEACE ENFORCEMENT" AND "WAR".
PAPER G: LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL.
PAPER H: A U.N. ALTERNATIVE TO WAR: "UNIITING FOR PEACE".
PAPER I: IN PLACE OF WAR, OPEN UP IRAQ. Mary Kaldor 13 February 2003 PAPER J: IRAQ: A WAY OUT? Dr. Priscilla Elworthy, January 17th 2003 SUMMARY:THE UN CHARTER DOES NOT AUTHORISE THIS WAR WITH IRAQ Why it is important to distinguish between "War" and "Armed force" The phrase "armed force" can mean anything from a friendly local police force to all-out nuclear war. Few "doves" would dispute the legitimacy of the former, and few "hawks" would recommend the latter. Failure to specify exactly what we mean when we talk about "war" or "force" can result in public debate that is unnecessarily polarised. A person can be entirely against war, in all circumstances, and yet not dispute the legitimacy of using armed force, even lethal force, on occasions. Imprecise use of words lets public debate about Iraq be driven by spin. A second UN resolution, however it is phrased, would not necessarily make war on Iraq lawful. Law concerns itself with the deed that is done, not the name it is known by. Debate should focus on clarifying the nature of those actions which are both lawful and likely to work. The Security Council cannot authorise an unlawful war War is generally illegal - see Papers A to E in this dossier. The Security Council can authorise the limited use of armed force, but these Peace Enforcement operations are very different from war-fighting operations (Paper F). To be lawful, force must be necessary, proportionate and discriminate. The purpose of Peace Enforcement is not to "defeat an enemy", but to promote international peace and security. Who is responsible for deciding the degree of force used? It would be wrong to assume that if force is authorised by the UN, decisions about the nature and extent of any force to be used may be left to the military, or to particular governments. The Security Council has a duty to determine the degree of force used in its name. If unlawful force is used, individual politicians, as well as members of the UK armed forces, could face prosecution in the new International Criminal Court. How should these decisions be made? In considering what action to authorise, members of the Security Council have a duty to act in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter (Paper G). A resolution obtained by threats or inducements would not be valid (Paper A). Before armed force may be used, two tests must be satisfied. There has to be a "threat to peace" and non-military measures must be "inadequate" (Paper C). Have adequate non-military measures been used? Hawks and doves alike are dissatisfied with the results of UN actions to date, and call for more effective measures. However, potentially effective non-military approaches have received less publicity, and less funding, than preparations for war. Some non-military approaches are described in Papers H to J. See also note 1. Does using armed force mean abandoning peaceful means? No. In Peace Enforcement doctrine the use of rigorously controlled force supports, rather than replaces, nonviolent approaches (Paper F). Such rigorously controlled use of force could satisfy both those who are impatient for forceful action and those who believe that there has not yet been genuine and competent use of effective conflict resolution techniques. The immorality of polarising debate. Politicians trade taunts about the immorality of war and the immorality of doing nothing, but ignore the immorality of yah-boo politics. False dichotomies prevent proper consideration of measures which might satisfy both sides, and prolong the inconclusive delay which so infuriates critics of the UN. 1 See www.war.inquiry.freeuk.com for the full text of this paper and references to papers on nonviolent responses to repressive regimes, and techniques for negotiating with tyrants.
WAR, THE UN AND THE LAW The Guardian, Letters, Thursday February 13, 2003
The security council has delegated to it by the UN charter responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security (article 24). In doing so, it must act in accordance with the purposes of the UN, that is, "to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace". A resolution which failed to comply with this fundamental principle, possibly resulting from members of the security council being browbeaten, would not confer legality on any use of force. The consequences are far-reaching. The US has refused to support the international criminal court (an ideal venue to try Saddam Hussein for his continuing acts of inhumanity to his own citizens). Its citizens are likely to be immune from prosecution in the ICC for any acts which might be categorised as war crimes or crimes against humanity in the event of substantial civilian casualties. Not so UK citizens who are members of the armed forces, nor their political masters. Unless of course the security council exercised its power to interfere with the process of the court and require that court to desist from a prosecution. Now that would be to bring the security council into disrepute. Peter Carter QC WHY INTERNATIONAL LAW MATTERS (extracts)
It is true that international lawyers have through decades argued about the interpretation of these basic rules of restraint, but these Charter guidelines have generally been well enough understood to enable a clear line to be drawn between permissible and impermissible uses of forces in most circumstances. A measure of flexibility existed, giving the UN legal authority to authorize non-defensive uses of force so as to uphold global peace and security, and some would add in light of recent practice, to protect vulnerable populations from severe abuses of human rights, especially ethnic cleansing and genocide. ... The basic Charter idea was to regulate the use of force in relations among sovereign states. As such, with a bit of stretching international law could be responsibly interpreted as justifying recourse to a defensive war directed at Afghanistan. Even this was a stretch because the Taliban regime was not directly implicated in the attacks, and it was not given an opportunity to hand over the al Qaeda leadership or to cooperate with the United States in securing Afghan territory from being used in the future as a major terrorist base area. ... [However], for President Bush claiming a generalized right to wage a pre-emptive war was in flagrant contradiction with the Charter’s legal framework without any special circumstances justifying an exception. And to apply that claim to Iraq, given the absence of any credible evidence of an imminent threat ... was to carry American unilateralism to the frightening extreme of claiming an extraordinarily dangerous and perverse right of a preventive war (that is, lacking the elements of necessity and imminence). Even here the question prevent what? cries for an answer given the absence of a plausible Iraqi threat in the foreseeable future and the razor sharp containment policy poised to annihilate Iraq in the event of a Baghdad provocation in the years ahead. ... To redefine the issue of US aggressiveness toward Iraq as the enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions or as a disarmament measure is to trample on sovereign rights of Iraq, and to subject its long suffering population to the scourge of a one-sided war.
SECOND RESOLUTION: DEFEND THE UN CHARTER ARROW Briefing 28 (10 February 2003) by Milan Rai (extracts)
Even with a new resolution, this war is wrong ... a war on Iraq in the present circumstances would be an attack not only on the civilian population of Iraq, but on the core principles of the UN itself, an attack on the United Nations Charter. The anti-war movement must defend the UN Charter, against the UN Security Council if necessary. 'Material breach'/'serious consequences' It is unlikely that a new UN Resolution will explicitly authorise the use of force under US leadership ... It is more likely that the Resolution will declare Iraq in 'material breach' of its disarmament duties, and threaten 'serious consequences'. These vague phrases do not amount to an authorisation to use force. ... What the UN Charter says Even if the Resolution did explicitly 'authorise' the use of force, war would not be legal. Article 39 of the UN Charter: 'The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.' Art. 41 deals with non-military measures. Art. 42: 'Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.' So there are two tests: There has to be a 'threat to peace' and non-military means are 'inadequate'. Iraq is not a 'threat to peace' British Vice-Admiral Sir James Jungius KBE observed in a letter to The Times (1 Jan., p. 25): 'Even if the weapons do exist, where is the evidence of intent to use them? ... Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Douglas Hogg: 'The real question is not whether he's got weapons of mass destruction, but rather whether-if he has got those weapons-he is a grave and imminent threat to the rest of us... even if he had these things, unless he's a grave and imminent threat there isn't a moral basis for war, be-cause the doctrine of self-defence isn't properly invoked.' (BBC Radio 4, The World This Weekend, 12 Jan.).. 'Adequate' nonviolent measures: inspection To contain Iraq's suspected weapons programmes: 1) we can detect and disarm any remaining weapons capability, and 2) we can 'freeze' Iraq's capacity to make such weapons, to prevent their development and use in the future. ... 'To carry out a thorough inspection would likely take several months.' Ewen Buchanan, spokesperson for UNMOVIC. (FT, 9 Jan., p. 10) Mohammed El Baradei, head of IAEA inspections in Iraq, told the Security Council on 27 Jan., ... . These few months, in my view, would be a valuable investment in peace because they could help us to avoid a war.' (Financial Times, 28 Jan., p. 9) ... 'Adequate' nonviolent measures: monitoring More importantly, UN weapons inspectors could now install throughout Iraq a system of video cameras, radiation detectors, temperature sensors and other devices to monitor 'dual-use' equipment that might be used for developing weapons of mass destruction as well as for normal civilian purposes. Video and air sampling information could be fed back live to the inspectors' Baghdad HQ, and then onto the UN in New York, as they did before Dec. 1998. ... The Security Council is not above the law ... it is up to the Security Council to 'determine' whether there is a threat to peace, and to 'consider' whether nonviolent means are inadequate. However, this cannot be a licence for the Security Council to make war at whim. There must be some objective basis in fact for the findings that (a) there is a 'threat to peace' and (b) that nonviolent means are 'inadequate'. In the present case, there are no threatening military deployments, no signalled threats, and no doctrine of aggressive attack-by Iraq. ... The full briefing is on www.justicenotvengeance.org under "Arrow Anti-War Briefings" FORGOTTEN TRUTHS (Extracts) John Roberts, Chair, Institute for Law and Peace, 16 February 2003 ... The important Resolution 1441 which reiterated and strengthened the Iraqi obligations threatens "serious consequences" for Iraq if they are not complied with. It is clearly the pivot around which constructive discussion must revolve. It not only stated the will of the United Nations explicitly but it was also, unusually for so peremptory and obvious a decision, unanimous. The inclusion of Arab states as well as the five permanent members made it significant beyond the regular Security Council decisions. But neither the Resolution nor the "serious consequences" that it envisages, mention war. The Resolution makes it inescapable that the Council will have an obligation to ensure those consequences but it does not spell them out. The conclusion must surely be that whatever they will be, it is the Council that will have to determine them and such determination will require further deliberation, taking into account the situation that has developed and the degree of failure of the Iraqis to comply with the terms of the Resolution. However, under the United Nations Charter, as from the time of the Kellogg Pact, war is illegal, which is tacitly recognised in that there have only been a couple of declarations of war since 1945. The "self-defence" that is permitted under the Charter is not, in strictly legal terms, to be equated with war. The Security Council may, indeed is obliged, to take all necessary steps, including the use of force, to uphold or restore international peace and security. But there is no provision in the Charter for the United Nations itself to go to war. That is because the use of force is not always War. It may resemble it closely and indeed be thought of and spoken of as "war". But not only may it legally be other than war; its conduct and direction will not be that of war and if the United Nations follows the Charter and the rules of international law they are bound to be different. Part of the difficulties of distinguishing between war and the legal use of force comes from failures of the Security Council to lay down proper and detailed directions for the use of force under United Nations auspices. Notably, that relates to the continuing failure to empower and operate the U.N. Military Staff Committee that appeared in the Charter but has since 1945 been a dead letter. Instead, the responsibility for the practice of peacekeeping has been largely shuffled off to the national armed forces of the variety of member-states that have sent contingents to act as "United Nations" troops. Sometimes, as in Rwanda and Srebrenica, this has led to disasters. Circumstances at present are not at that pass. There is no urgency, after Iraq's containment for 12 years and the destruction of 90% of its weapons, in those "serious consequences". ... The full article is available by request to John Roberts on jrmundialist@aol.com
IRAQ CRISIS: DIPLOMACY: 'Conflict would be deemed illegal' A legal pressure group told the UN Security Council yesterday that a preventive war against Iraq would be "both illegal and unnecessary", threatening the very foundation of international law and the United Nations. "An action of such overriding importance can destroy international law," said Judge Christopher Weeramantry, former vice-president of the International Court of Justice. In a petition presented yesterday, the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms said there was "no precedent in international law for use of force as a preventive measure, when there has been no actual or imminent attack by the offending State". Use of force is only permitted in the case of attack, or imminent attack, or if the Security Council declares a threat to peace and non-military measures have been determined to be inadequate, the association says. Peter Weiss, the body's vice-president, said current UN resolutions offered "no pre-existing authorisation" for an Iraq war, adding that there was a precedent for the matter to be taken to the General Assembly. Their position is likely to be contested by lawyers in the US administration, which argues that the current resolutions, alongside what they say is clear non-compliance by Iraq, give them the backing they need. But it is unclear who is the final arbiter. Some argue that the Security Council holds the ultimate authority, but Mr Weeramantry says it is subject to the UN Charter and the International Court of Justice.
QUOTES FROM EXPERTS ON MILITARY DOCTRINE The military doctrine governing Peace Enforcement operations, and distinguishing these from war, has been clarified by the Army Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, which was set up by the current Labour government (see reference 1b). War differs from Peace Enforcement in two respects - aims and methods. The AIM of peace enforcement is different from the aim of war.
LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL Summary of Correspondence between George Farebrother and John Burroughs
of the Lawyers Comittee on Nuclear Policy, the US Chapter of The possibility of a Security Council resolution which is contrary to the purposes of the UN and therefore illegal leads to the question of the accountability of the Security Council itself. Some years ago Mohammed Bedjaoui (formerly a judge of the International Court of Justice) addressed this issue in "The Security Council and the Rule of law" arguing that SC resolutions should be subject to legal review by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This approach has considerable appeal. In many countries the actions of governments are open to judicial review; and the ICJ is, after all, the legal arm of the United Nations. However there are problems about this approach. The ICJ can hear and settle Contentious Cases - legal disputes between states which accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court. Britain, for example, is one of these, but Iraq is not. Perhaps a neighbouring state which would be harmed could bring a case - although this is unlikely scenario. Alternatively, any United Nations body can ask the ICJ for an Advisory Opinion - a determination by the Court of what international law actually is. The General Assembly could ask for an Advisory Opinion on on the lawfulness of any war, especially when not explicitly authorized by the Security Council, to prevent a state from acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The ICJ could reject this on the ground that this was really a contentious case. It could also could say that to hear such a case would infringe the authority of Security Council. as it did in the Libya case when it declined to assert that it has authority to review Security Council actions. Instead of adjudicating of the legality of the Security Council Resolution the ICJ might be willing to deal with a more general question such as the lawfulness of preventive war, what is a threat to international peace and security justifying war, or some other general formulation, to attempt to avoid the problem of directly infringing on Security Council . A U.N. ALTERNATIVE TO WAR: "UNITING FOR PEACE" In the last few months the Bush Administration has been unyielding in its march towards war over the objections of some allies and despite the efforts of the United Nations. It now seems inevitable that the United States, with some other countries, may soon engage in armed conflict in Iraq. But for people around the world terrified by the current conflict, there may be hope yet. That hope lies in a little-discussed mechanism of the United Nations which, although it seems marginalized by American power, has the potential to stop the war. In 1950, the Security Council set up a procedure for insuring that stalemates between countries would not prevent the United Nations from carrying out its mission to "maintain international peace and security." With the United States playing an important role in its adoption, the Council adopted Resolution 377, the aptly named "Uniting for Peace" in an almost unanimous vote. Uniting for Peace provides that if, because of the lack of unanimity of the permanent members of the Security Council (France, China, Russia, Britain, United States), the Council cannot maintain international peace where there is a "threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression," the General Assembly "shall consider the matter immediately...." The language of Uniting for Peace would also allow its use even if the Security Council approved the use of force against Iraq. It can be employed "if the Security Council...fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security..." The General Assembly can meet within 24 hours to consider such a matter, and can recommend collective measures to U.N. members including the use of armed forces to "maintain or restore international peace and security." The Uniting for Peace resolution procedure has been used ten times since 1950. Its first use was by the United States. After Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 Britain and France attacked and occupied parts of the canal. Cease-fire resolutions in the Security Council were quickly vetoed by Britain and France. The United States went to the General Assembly calling for a cease-fire and a withdrawal of forces. An emergency session was held under the Uniting for Peace resolution; the U.S. resolution and subsequently an even stronger resolution passed the General Assembly. In the face of these resolutions it took less then a week for Britain and France to withdraw. Uniting for Peace was next used by the United States to pressure the Soviet Union to cease its intervention in Hungary in 1956. The Soviet Union had used its veto to prevent the passage of an anti-intervention resolution in the Security Council. Again, an emergency session of the General Assembly was held and the Soviet Union was ordered to stop its intervention in Hungary. In the current impasse over Iraq in the Security Council, Uniting for Peace can and should be used. The General Assembly should consider taking action with regard to the threat to the peace posed by U.S. military action against Iraq taken without U.N. authority. (The General Assembly could also act, as stated earlier, if the Security Council authorized a war that was a "threat to international peace and security.") It could require that no military action be taken against Iraq without the explicit authority of the Security Council. It could mandate that the inspection regime be permitted to complete its inspections. It seems unlikely that the United States and Britain would ignore such a measure. A vote by the majority of countries in the world, particularly if it were almost unanimous, would make the unilateral rush to war more difficult. Uniting for Peace can be invoked either by seven members of the Security Council or by a majority of the members of the General Assembly. This gives those who oppose unilateral war a real opportunity for activism. People everywhere in the world can lobby their governments to bring on such a resolution. This effort can become a worldwide effort to, as the UN Charter so eloquently states, "save succeeding generations form the scourge of war." A draft resolution and other supporting Uniting for Peace documents are on www.ccr-ny.org IN PLACE OF WAR, OPEN UP IRAQ Mary Kaldor 13 February 2003 Can you be against war on Iraq without giving succour to Saddam? This is a new version of an old dilemma, says one of the leading voices of the 1980s Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly and European Nuclear Disarmament. Activists who opposed the nuclear arms race while supporting democratisation of the Soviet bloc helped carve a space where freedom could grow. Could the same happen in Iraq? Arguments over the US and Iraq often assume that war is the only way to bring about regime change - that, therefore, people who oppose the war are against regime change in Iraq. Indeed, spokespeople of the anti-war movements - especially those such as Tony Benn or George Galloway who actually have meetings with Saddam Hussein - sometimes appear as apologists for the Iraqi regime. The appearance of condoning dictatorship, from these former or current British Labour MPs or others, ends up discrediting the anti-war movement. An unacknowledged lesson from the cold war era may be relevant here - for, in the end, although this is often not acknowledged, it was regime change in Eastern Europe that ended this dangerous conflict. And pressure from the peace movement helped to bring about regime change in a peaceful way. What we learned in the 1980s was that it was very difficult to separate peace and human rights. Violations of human rights are a cause of conflict and, at the same time, war and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are themselves violations of human rights. Now, in the very different but comparable case of Iraq, I am concerned that the peace movement has not taken on board the lessons of the 1980s peace movement about the importance of human rights. Beyond the binary In the 1980s, people like me who supported dissidents in eastern and central Europe were often accused by those on the left of being ‘pro-American’. Those who opposed nuclear weapons were tainted as ‘fellow-travellers’ by the right. When peace activists supported the east European opposition, we helped to break the polarisation that reinforced each side. A similar same kind of binary world-view tends to prevail today. Those who oppose the war are often dubbed the pro-Saddam Hussein gang; while to be in favour of regime change is seen as being pro-Bush or Blair. Yet the anti-war movement would be taken much more seriously if we were seen to offer a genuine set of proposals to undermine Saddam Hussein, while the claim of Bush and Blair to be on the side of the Iraqi people would look rather hollow if there were a serious alternative to the humanitarian catastrophe that could easily result from war. I do not believe that Saddam Hussein is much of a threat to the west, at least for the moment. If we are concerned, however, about what Saddam is doing to his own people and his neighbours, it can be argued that war is a most unpredictable and dangerous method of regime change. The biggest risks are to the Iraqi people themselves, who have already suffered enough. If the war starts with a bombing campaign, Saddam Hussein may well kill as many people as possible for fear of an uprising and use his WMD, if he has them. In the fog of war, warlords are likely to seize local fiefdoms in the name of religion, tribe or ethnicity, resulting in the kind of widespread violence that American troops have not shown themselves able to manage. Beyond the risks to the Iraqi people, there are unpredictable consequences for the Middle East and for the world. The Israel-Palestine conflict may worsen; there is talk of further expulsions of Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt. Or Turkey may use the opportunity to take control of parts of northern Iraq; likewise Iran in the south. Above all, a war would have frightening global implications. Nowadays, the distinction between war and human rights violations is increasingly difficult to sustain. We say, for example, that in Afghanistan casualties from collateral damage were relatively low; there were ‘only’ some 1,300 casualties, not counting 3-400 people who died of starvation because they did not have access to humanitarian supplies, together with a similar number of Taliban fighters killed from the air. But what seems ‘relatively low’ from the perspective of war is extremely high from the perspective of human rights. Those who are vulnerable to the ideologies of the terrorists perceive this method of counting to be hypocritical; massacres on this scale in New York or Halabja are truly shocking, so why is ‘collateral damage’ different and acceptable? This polarisation of perception is likely to lead to an increase in terrorist attacks, contributing to a broader political polarisation on a global scale, greatly weakening those who favour peace and human rights. Even if the war is short, and the regime crumbles ‘cleanly’, insofar as this legitimises the American strategy of pre-emption through the global war against tyrants and terrorists, such a polarisation is inevitable. Those of us who oppose the war, none the less have a responsibility to put forward proposals about how regime change in Iraq might be done in a peaceful way. A dual strategy: from above and below What worked in the 1980s was the opening up of totalitarian regimes, achieved both from above and from below. On the one hand, new international instruments such as the Helsinki Final Act offered some hope to dissidents and opposition groups - hope of a legal framework that overrode national sovereignty. On the other hand, direct support to opposition groups - both material and psychological - helped to expand political space. Every possible opening was seized upon, starting with the most moderate regimes in Hungary and Poland. Of course, Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship is much more brutal than the ‘socialist’ regimes in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. His regime can be compared to the worst excesses of Stalinism. Some would say that there are no openings to be grasped. Yet the return of the weapons inspectors is, in itself, a new opening. It used to be assumed both by Saddam Hussein and among Iraqi people that the United States implicitly supported Saddam’s rule. The failure to finish off the regime after the Gulf War of 1991 was explained by the fact that the United States feared any alternative to Saddam Hussein. That belief has crumbled in the last few months. Evidence from the Iraqi Communist Party (which still has members on the ground) and from the International Crisis Group suggests that Saddam Hussein is beginning to weaken. People are talking more freely than before. By agreeing to the weapons inspectors, he has lost some of his seeming invincibility. Saddam Hussein is following the worst possible course of action for his own survival in power. By partly cooperating with the inspectors, he looks weak. But because he does not cooperate fully, the pressure on him is sustained. What if he were to cooperate fully? Would the international community then have to lift the sanctions and allow him to remain in power? The Germans and the French are already arguing for extending the inspection regime. Shouldn’t their initiative also embrace human rights issues? The peace movement could push for more international measures designed to sustain the pressure on the regime, to make openings in the totalitarian system and to offer some opportunities to Iraqi opposition groups. Among the Iraqi opposition, some argue - and this is borne out by experience of other totalitarian regimes - that once holes begin to emerge in the structures of power, the whole edifice can quickly disintegrate. In place of war, an alternative scheme Many proposals have been put forward by members of the Iraqi opposition. Earlier United Nations (UN) resolutions dealing with the repression of the Iraqi population have tackled such issues as the return of refugees, or rights to free speech and association. A new UN resolution aimed at opening up the regime and providing instruments that could be exploited by courageous opposition groups might call for: A permanent monitoring system on WMD. The establishment of an ad hoc international court to try some 300 or so war criminals. Saddam Hussein and his immediate entourage should be indicted. The foreign bank accounts of these people will be frozen and they will be unable to travel. It should be made clear that there will be amnesty for others, perhaps under a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (It is sometimes argued that it is better to offer an exit strategy for Saddam Hussein. But quite apart from the fact that he is unlikely to accept an exit strategy, this approach offers hope to those who are not immediately implicated in the regime.) Iraq should accept a monitoring system regarding human rights violations. This has already been agreed in Security Council Resolution 689. There should be demands for the return of refugees, the right of opposition parties to open offices inside Iraq and develop their activities, or for scheduling democratic elections under international supervision. Oil for Food Programme should be governed by the UN and not the government, as in northern Iraq. Also, the continuation of the Oil for Food Programme might be conditional on reductions in military spending and increases in health and education spending. Where would this leave military pressure? Military pressure has been important in bringing about the return of the weapons inspectors. Does that mean that the threat of war has to be sustained? I do believe that troops should continue to be deployed around the borders to be available to protect Iraqi citizens. But the protection of civilians, in my view, is very different from outright invasion. The current moment is very dangerous. There is a risk that the split in the international community means that the US will go to war with the support of Britain and right-wing regimes like those of Italy, Spain and Denmark, not to mention some of the east and central European countries. Instead, the approach outlined above could be put forward by Britain and others to reunite Europe in a way that just might contain the other rogue state, the United States. The article is on the Open Democracy Web Site, www.opendemocracy.net
IRAQ: A WAY OUT? Dr. Priscilla Elworthy, January 17th 2003 Tony Blair is clearly aware that a solution to the crisis with Iraq is intricately tied up with the impasse in the Middle East and the plight of the Palestinians. That problem however is going to take time to resolve, and in the meantime the profound risks involved in an attack on Iraq need to be avoided. It is therefore worth examining the situation from the perspective of the needs and wishes of the key protagonists, because if these can be satisfied a way forward may become clear.
Commercial arrangements for the export of Iraqi oil would return to a free market basis when an elected government was in place. In the meantime, negotiations with oil companies would be handled by the UN, in an extension of present arrangements. OPEC could continue. Such a settlement would not include the establishment of US military bases in Iraq, but it would imply the final dismantling of any remaining CBW, a residual UN inspection force, and a UN resolution making clear that any return to the development/deployment of WMD was strictly and would be enforcably prohibited. This and other papers by Dr Elworthy are on http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/
|