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GENEVA, March 25: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Tuesday warned of the risk of a humanitarian disaster in Iraq following the outbreak of war in the country.
“The war will further weaken the Iraqi population,” Fischer said in a speech to the UN Human Rights Commission.
“Above all, women, children and vulnerable groups will be those who suffer most. The risk of a humanitarian disaster is a cause of grave concern,” Fischer added.
Fischer also appealed to all warring parties to protect civilians and prisoners of war in Iraq, and to abide by international humanitarian laws.
In his speech to the 53 member states in the UN’s top human rights forum, Fischer insisted that the United Nations provided the backbone for international efforts to implement “common values and norms”.
“It remains the principal institution for the maintenance of peace and stability in the world of today and tomorrow. There is no substitute for its peacekeeping role,” he said.
Germany strongly opposed military action in Iraq by the United States and Britain to back up UN Security Council resolutions.
Fischer also highlighted the need to uphold basic freedoms and human rights during “our common campaign against international terrorism”.
“Anything else would be a fatal setback, indeed a victory for the terrorists. There cannot be an ‘anti-terrorism bonus’ for anyone,” he said.
UNICEF: The head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called on both sides in the Iraq war to give priority to children’s safety, appealing to them to focus more on the humanitarian impact.
“We’re very concerned about reports of deaths and injuries among children and women,” said Carol Bellamy, UNICEF’s executive director, in a written statement.
UNICEF said the situation in the southern city of Basra, where intense ground fighting was raging in the city’s outskirts on Tuesday, was “of particular concern”.
BELGIUM: Belgium, which has fiercely opposed the war on Iraq, is to transport humanitarian aid to Kuwait for use in southern Iraq, the defence ministry said on Tuesday.
Brussels will take water purification equipment for UNICEF from Jordan, where they are stored, to Kuwait City, at the request of the World Food Programme (WFP), said the ministry.
CANADA: Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham said in Ottawa he hoped for a swift end to the war in Iraq and a quick start to a multinational reconstruction of the country.
He rejected a claim by an opposition member of parliament that the government was “wobbling and waffling” on the Iraqi question, insisting the government had not changed its position and still had no plans to join the US-led military coalition in Iraq.
Ottawa was “very disappointed” the United States and Britain had not held out longer for a diplomatic resolution to the Iraqi crisis, but he said “now that the war has begun, in terms of the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, we do not want a long drawn-out war.”
KUWAIT: More than 600 volunteers from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society have loaded up ten large trucks of food ready to head across the border to the cities of southern Iraq, deprived of food or water, the head of the relief committee said.
DUBLIN: The Irish government has allocated five million euros to alleviate the suffering of Iraqi civilians, junior Foreign Affairs minister Tom Kitt said on Tuesday.
Kitt made the announcement after meeting United Nations and Red Cross personnel and a number of Irish humanitarian organisations.—AFP
