Security Council with 12 votes for (including the unanimous vote of the Great
Powers), two abstentions and one against (Cuba) - is probably the most outrageous ever approved by this body. Even from the most formal point of view, it is worse than the one which permitted the use of force to remove Iraq from Kuwait.
SALAH JABER
N FACT, the new resolution contains several innovations in the field of inter-state relations, as covered by "international legality". First of all, it is explicitly a diktat, since there will only be a formal ceasefire and a withdrawal of the troops occupying southern
Iraq if this latter country submits to all the conditions laid out in the resolution.
These are draconian: Iraq must accept unconditionally under international supervision the destruction and removal of all chemical and biological weapons, material usable in nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles with a range greater than
150 kilometers and related parts, repair and production facilities. Moreover, a total arms embargo is to be maintained against Iraq, to be reviewed after 120 days.
Even Egypt, one of the most prominent members in the anti-Iraqi coalition, felt obliged to protest against these clauses, whose iniquity is blatant in a region where several states, and above all Israel, possess "non-conventional" weapons. Israel in fact has more of them than all its near and distant neighbours put together, including a hundred nuclear warheads (according to American information) and the Jericho missiles, which are a lot more efficient than the Iraqi Scuds.
These conditions in the resolution have nothing to do with the "liberation" of Kuwait. The pure and simple aim is to achieve the elimination of Iraq's strategic capabilities, prevent them being restored in the foreseeable future and in this way guarantee the Zionist state's regional supremacy and the security of the oil monarchies tied to Washington.
The diktat is not directed against Saddam Hussein but against Iraq as such, a point made recently by a leader of the Iraqi Communist Party:
"What the Iraqi opposition finds most worrying is the United States' attitude..
(Their) objective seems to be for the moment to get as many concessions as possible out of Saddam Hussein, concessions which will...be binding on the Baghdad dictator's successors. In sum, the
Americans are not only seeking to punish
Saddam Hussein, but any government that may succeed him; they will be obliged to accept American hegemony throughout the region" (Le Monde, March 29, 1991).
Reparations to be levied on oil revenues
Iraq is also to pay reparations to Kuwait, although the latter country is much richer than the former. These will be levied by force on Iraqi oil exports; a percentage (as yet to be fixed) of the income of these exports will be placed in a fund under the management of an ad hoc commission.
Kuwaiti measures and the absence of any The comparison between these proreparations for Iran in the 1988 resolution that put an end to the Iran/Iraq war speaks volumes. The embargo on Iraqi exports will only be lifted after Iraqi "non-conventional weapons have been done away with and the compensation mechanism is in working order. This is extortion on threat of strangulation. Furthermore, the Security Council has taken it upon itself to fix the border between Iraq and Kuwait, instead of submitting the issue to a body such as the International Court in The Hague.
Meanwhile the massacre of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs by Saddam Hussein's army is not even mentioned.
The adoption of such a resolution, which even its principal sponsor, the American ambassador, has described as "tough but fair", should clear up any illusions as to "arbitration" by the Security Council or the Great Powers assembled under American hegemony. To believe that the one or the other is going to find a "just" solution to the Palestinian question is at best a sign of naivety bordering on stupidity. *