Stop New War Against Iraq: Iraqi Deputy PM

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Stop New War Against Iraq: Iraqi Deputy PM

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The international community should stand up against any new aggression against Iraq and ensurethat the 12-year embargo against the country be lifted, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in Johannesburg on Monday.

Blaming his country's environmental problems on the "forces of aggression" in the Gulf War, he said, "the United States is threatening another large-scale aggression."

That would cause even more devastation and further catastrophe for the people of Iraq, Aziz said during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg.

Iraq had always managed to keep its environment intact, particularly through the great efforts made by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Aziz told world leaders.

"The conditions concerning sustainable development and the environment has changed substantially since the 1991 aggression and the imposition of the unjust and all-out embargo."

The "forces of aggression" had dropped 140,000 tons of explosives on Iraq with the aim to destroy its infrastructure. That had also contaminated elements of that infrastructure.

Due to radial contamination from depleted uranium, diseases hadincreased. Cancer rates had compounded, as had embryonic deficiencies, Aziz said.

"The consequences of the environmental devastation and contamination are beyond Iraq's capacity to restore."

The economic and technological embargo against the country had hampered its ability to rehabilitate its environment. Iraq was seriously deprived of what it needed, and of control of its environment through "American malpractices," the deputy prime minister said.

To restore Iraq's environment would require the lifting of the embargo against it, he added.

"Iraq believes that if the international community is truly interested in sustainable development, it should struggle against the manipulation of any form of embargo against states."

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