Assistance to the Palestinian people – Letter from Iraq

Letter dated 17 August 2001 from the Permanent Representative of Iraq

to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

On instructions from my Government, I have the honour to transmit to you herewith a letter dated 16 August 2001 from Mr. Naji Sabri, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Iraq. The Minister calls attention to the ongoing wanton aggression being committed by the Zionist entity against the people of Palestine, which has caused its humanitarian situation to deteriorate to such an extent as to portend an assured humanitarian catastrophe should the situation continue as it is and failing the provision of urgent economic and material assistance to the Palestinian people.

The Minister asks you to do your utmost to secure immediate approval for the allocation of 1 billion euros of Iraq’s assets in order to make food, medicine and other basic supplies available to the Palestinian people.

I should be grateful if you would have the present letter and its annex circulated as a document of the Security Council.

 (Signed ) Mohammed A. Al-Douri
 Ambassador
  Permanent Representative

Annex to the letter dated 17 August 2001 from the Permanent Representative

of Iraq to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

Day by day, the wanton aggression waged by the Zionist entity against the people of Palestine escalates. On a daily basis, this usurper entity is bombarding Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps using the most up-to-date weapons of mass destruction, F-16 aircraft, Apache helicopters, depleted-uranium munitions and toxic gases supplied to it by the United States of America. The aggression has left hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded in the ranks of the civilian population, has caused the destruction of residential neighbourhoods and economic, civil and services-related installations, and has involved the bulldozing of cultivated land and the forced displacement of the population as well as other gross and pervasive violations of Palestinian human rights. There have been such crimes as political assassination, collective punishment, the imposition of blockades and closures, the isolation of Palestinian towns and villages from each other and the suspension of economic activity by the Palestinian people, all of which are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ongoing aggression has further aggravated the already impaired humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people, thus portending an assured humanitarian catastrophe should the situation continue as it is and failing the provision of urgent economic and material assistance to the Palestinian people so that it may: meet the emergency needs resulting from the destruction of Palestinian economic, health-care, cultural and services infrastructure; secure basic medical and educational services; provide assistance to the hundreds of thousands of unemployed and support to the families of those killed, wounded and captured in the valiant Intifadah; replant the areas bulldozed by the Zionist military machine; repair the roads; and provide immediate relief to Palestinians who have abandoned their lands and homes or whose houses, property and farms have been destroyed.

In the light of the foregoing, I should like to refer to the letters dated 26 November 2000 (S/2000/1119, annex), 10 December 2000 (S/2000/1174, annex), 19 December 2000 (S/2000/1216, annex), 23 January 2001 (S/2001/75, annex), 20 February 2001 (S/2001/143, annex) and 28 February 2001 (S/2001/190, annex) from the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iraq addressed to you. These letters concern the decision of Iraq’s political leadership to allocate 1 billion euros of Iraq’s oil revenues under the memorandum of understanding of 20 May 1996 to the Palestinian people in order to support the stance it has taken in both the national and pan-Arab contexts.

In the aforesaid letters, Iraq set forth the mechanisms required to implement the decision of its political leadership. Lists of the requirements of the Palestinian people in terms of food, medicine and other basic items were compiled and sent to you. However, the representatives of the United States of America and the United Kingdom in the Security Council Committee established by resolution 661 (1990) obstructed agreement on the allocation of the sum of 1 billion euros of Iraq’s assets to the insurgent Palestinian people, and they did so in their eagerness to inflict further harm and destruction on the Palestinian people and in order to encourage the Zionist entity to maintain its policy of inflicting collective punishments and killing and physically liquidating the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Arab people is languishing under the most heinous and loathsome form of racist settler colonialism, as represented by the Zionist entity occupying the territory of Palestine, and it is in most urgent need of concrete and expeditious humanitarian assistance. This is especially so given the serious escalation of liquidations, of destruction and of the harassment of the Palestinian people. It is Iraq’s sovereign right to share with the fraternal Palestinian people just a morsel of bread and a draught of medicine, despite its own shortage of both, and it is the legitimate right of the people of Palestine to have the support of its brothers and of its friends in the world so as to bolster its steadfastness in confronting the most arrogant of savage and racist assaults.

The persistence and increasing gravity of the Palestinian Arab people’s plight as a result of daily Zionist aggression requires that the international community, as represented by both countries and organizations, should support this insurgent people. Your humanitarian duty and the responsibilities that are assigned to you also require you to play your own role in halting the aggression against the people of Palestine and endeavouring to mitigate the suffering of a people that has now been languishing under the yoke of occupation for more than 50 years.

On the basis of the foregoing, I ask you to endeavour to do your utmost to secure immediate approval for the allocation of 1 billion euros of Iraq’s assets for the provision of food, medicine and other basic humanitarian supplies to the Palestinian people.

(Signed) Naji Sabri
Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Iraq

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