Iraq says it has complied with United Nations resolutions and that UN sanctions imposed when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990 should be lifted.

In an official statement published by the Iraqi News Agency, Iraq said it wants to set a time frame for the work of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge of dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

It has also reiterated its demand that the UN does not use spy planes from the United States for all its flights over Iraqi territory.

The official Iraqi newspaper al-Jumhouriya denounced the US demand that UN arms inspectors be given unimpeded access to presidential palaces, accusing Washington of trying to create a fresh crisis.

"Presidential palaces and other sites of sovereign nature should not come under the monitoring system... The United States is pushing its elements in inspection teams to inspect these symbols (of Iraqi sovereignty) in order to create a crisis," it said.

But the US Defense Secretary, William Cohen, said on Tuesday that Iraq was continuing to evade and deceive United Nations inspectors seeking to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

The Director of the United Monitoring and Verification Centre, Nils Carlstrom, said the inspectors had a big task ahead as they were trying to visit as many sites as possible every day to make up for the three-week suspension of their activities.

"The big task is to go over all the sites to check equipment and the monitoring devices," he said.

Agencies call for an end to sanctions
Meawhile, nine aid agencies working in Baghdad called for the seven-year-old sanctions to be lifted, saying they inflicted malnutrition, epidemics and "critical" unemployment levels on Iraq.

They said a UN-brokered deal allowing Iraq to sell limited quantities of oil to buy food and medicine covered barely 10% of Iraq's requirements.

"The real solution is lifting the embargo," the agencies said.

They said the impact of the sanctions, imposed on Iraq by the UN for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, included the "alarming appearance of malnutrition in one out of four children" and hospital reports of an increase in "chronic diseases and preventable infections that are reaching epidemic proportion".

The statement said water contamination had had "drastic health consequences" and unemployment had reached "a critical level".

Schools lacked essential teaching materials, and farmers could not grow enough food because of a lack of fertilizers, pesticides and seeds.

The statement was signed by Associazione Amici dei Bambini, Bridge to Baghdad - Un Ponte per Baghdad, Children Concern International, Enfants du Monde - Droits de l'Homme, Equilibre, Movimiento por la Paz el Desarme y la Libertad, Middle East Council of Churches, Pharmaciens sans Frontieres International Committee, and Friendship and Solidarity - Iraqi and Japanese Children.

Iraq says 1.2 million of its people have died as a result of the embargo. A 1995 UN report said that over half a million Iraqis had died as a result of the sanctions.

Western nations say the oil-for-food deal implemented last year has given Baghdad enough funds to buy food and medicine, and have criticised Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for building palaces while his people suffered.

The accord allows Iraq to sell $2bn worth of oil every six months to buy medicines and essential foodstuffs to lessen the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Iraqis.
 

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