From: mtaghavi@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Amir Taghavi)
Subject: Western allies look for ways to help Iraqi Shiites
Keywords: Iran, Mideast
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 22:56:09 GMT


	UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The allies from the Persian Gulf war looked
Tuesday for ways to stop the Iraqi government from waging a war of
repression against its Shiite minority, including a proposal to bar
Iraqi warplanes from flying over the southeastern marshlands inhabited
by the Muslim group.
	The allies' effort to deal with the war against the Shiites came as
U.N. weapons experts wrapped up a 10-day inspection tour of Iraq that
brought them fresh information on Baghdad's ballistic missile program
but reportedly left unchallenged an Iraqi statement they couldn't enter
any government ministries.
	The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the U.N. inspectors had
planned to enter Iraq's Ministry for Military Industrialization but
canceled the visit after their destination was disclosed in a New York
Times report on Sunday.
	The Times report suggested President Bush was pressing for the visit,
hoping to provoke Iraqi President Saddam Hussein into a confrontation
that would shore up Bush's standing with U.S. voters. Bush denied the
report but said he had consulted allies about forcing Iraq to submit to
U.N. weapons inspections.
	Tim Trevan, a spokesman for the Special Commission inspecting Iraq's
weapons program, and other U.N. officials have said the commission's
inspection schedules are independent from national politics, even though
it depends on intelligence from U.N. members, particularly the United
States.
	Exasperated by news reports that the commission acted on U.S. orders,
Trevan said Tuesday that the Special Commission is ``just carrying out
inspections'' and would not comment on press accounts of its activities.
	White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, speaking to reporters at the
Republican National Convention in Houston, said, ``The United States has
nothing to do with the selection of the sites for the U.N. inspection
team or the timing.''
	The 22-member U.N. inspection team returned from Baghdad to its home-
base in Bahrain to assess its findings and draw up a report for the
Security Council by week's end, Trevan said. Another 80 inspectors
remain in Iraq destroying chemical and biological weapons and buildings
used in producing nuclear materials, he said.
	Russian scientist Nikita Smidovitch, who led the 22-member team to
unidentified Iraqi sites, said it encountered no obstacle in carrying
out its search for documents and materials related to Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction.
	``The team entered all positions it wanted to inspect and collected
information on Iraq's weapons program,'' Smidovitch said in a departure
statement from Baghdad Tuesday. ``We ended our mission and visited all
scheduled positions.''
	The Special Commission was formed by the Security Council in April
1991 to search and destroy Iraq's chemical and biological weapons,
nuclear-grade weapons and ballistic missiles. Iraq accepted the
disarmement program as a condition for the cease-fire that ended the
Gulf war.
	The commission has come under intense scrutiny recently as its
inspection programs sometimes ran counter to Iraq's demands for respect
of its sovereignty. Baghdad denied inspectors access to its Agriculture
Ministry for several weeks, provoking a showdown between Bush and
Saddam.
	The dispute between Iraq and the United Nations appeared Tuesday to
be shifting from weapons inspection to Saddam's treatment of his
country's two main minority groups, the Kurds in the north and Shiites
in the south.
	U.N. spokeswoman Nadia Younes said unidentified gunmen fired two
shots at a U.N. guard in northern Iraq, wounding him in the abdomen. The
Swedish worker was evacuated to Kuwait and then back to his country.
	Fitzwater said Washington is watching closely the Iraqi campaign
against dissident Shiites, who live in the southern marshlands where the
U.N. Commission on Human Rights said Baghdad-led attacks and a massive
irrigation plan threatened a centuries-old culture.
	``The United Nations forbids the oppression of the Iraqi Shiites,''
Fitzwater said. ``It looks like there has been a violation. We are
watching it closely and consulting with our allies.''
	In Paris Tuesday, French Foreign Affairs Minister Roland Dumas
confirmed that Western allies try to protect the Shiite population by
banning the flight of Iraqi planes over the marshlands.
	Dumas said the purpose of interdicting the flights by the Iraqi Air
Force was to insure that ``the populations of southern Iraq benefit from
the same protection as that given the Kurdish people who live in
northern Iraq.''
	``The Baghdad regime has not been any more tender with the Shiite
population than it has been with the Kurds,'' Dumas added. ``As a result
the international community, and especially the allies, are worried
about this situation.''
	Dumas said in testimony in the French National Assembly's Foreign
Affairs Committee that his government was consulting with the U.N.
Security Council on the matter.
	In London, both Prime Minister John Major and Foreign Secretary
Douglas Hurd shortened their vacations to attend an emergency Cabinet
meeting called by Major Tuesday to discuss the situation in Iraq and
Yugoslavia.
	The British Broadcasting Corp. said the Cabinet meeting was called to
discuss military options open to Britain and its allies to ground Iraqi
warplanes in the wake of intelligence reports describing their attacks
on the Shiites.
	Western allies reportedly were considering establishing an exclusion
zone south of the 32nd parallel that would ban Iraqi aircraft from the
marshlands.
	British Defense Secretary Malcolm Rifkind was thought likely to
outline other options, but Britain and its Western allies reportedly
intended to keep Iraq uncertain about possible courses of action.
	``We want to keep him on his toes,'' a British government official
told the BBC.
	Iran, the Shiites' main supporter, warned Iraq in a commentary
broadcast on Tehran radio Tuesday that its attacks on Shiites and
renewed territorial claims on Kuwait invited foreign military
intervention.
	Iran warned the Iraqi rulers to ``avoid making repeated and
disasterous mistakes,'' because they ``created the grounds for military
intervention by foreign forces, which cannot be ignored.''


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