INTERNATIONAL PROGRESS ORGANIZATION -- INFORMATION SERVICE

COMMITTEE TO SAVE THE CHILDREN IN IRAQ FLIES WITH IRAQI AIRWAYS

Stockholm, 15 November 1991
 

A delegation of the Committee to Save the Children in Iraq left Stockholm today aboard Iraqi Airways flight 118 bound for Amman, Jordan, with relief goods to be transported overland to Baghdad. The Boeing 707 cargo plane, carrying 16.5 tons of medical equipment (including 98 hospital beds, 10 operating tables, 67 wheel chairs, 8,000 syringes, etc.), donated by the Swedish relief groups Erikshjaelpen, Star of Hope and Laekarmissionen, represents the first such flight of an Iraqi civilian plane since the Gulf war. Approval for the flight was granted by the UN Sanctions Committee on November 1st.

 Speaking to journalists at a press conference at Stockholm's Arlanda airport prior to takeoff, Committee coordinator Ms. Muriel Mirak-Weissbach said: "The most recent reports indicate that the worst predictions, regarding the deadly effects of the ongoing embargo, are, if anything, too optimistic. An increase of 380 percent in infant mortality, calculated by the International Study Team in October, means that what we are seeing in Iraq is genocide. People, particularly children, are dying like flies, for no other reason than vital food and medicine, equipment for electricity generation and water purification being withheld through the sanctions policy."

 "What is significant in our flight today is not only the 16.5 tons of excellent hospital equipment donated by Swedish organizations (Star of Hope, Erikshjaelpen, Laerkarmissionen), but the fact that - for the first time since the war - a plane of Iraqi Airways is delivering these life-saving goods. If the Iraqi civilian fleet, many of its aircraft currently grounded outside Iraq, were to be mobilized in an international relief effort, with direct flights into Iraq, significant help could be provided. Ultimately, however, it is only by lifting the embargo that the Iraqi population can be saved from annihilation. Today's flight is an important step in the process of lifting the embargo."

 Professor Hans Koechler, President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), is a founding member of the Committee to Save the Children in Iraq. The I.P.O. was the first international organization having raised - before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights - the issue of the sanctions imposed on Iraq. In the statement presented on 20 August 1991, the delegate of the I.P.O. had characterized the comprehensive economic sanctions as a gross violation of the basic human rights of the civilian population of Iraq.