Third Superpower

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Putin Positions

Authored by Michael Pate on April 29th, 2003 at 3:43 PM

“At the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq preventing it from selling its oil on the world market. These sanctions were part of a sweeping trade embargo which was first imposed in August 1990, after the invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions bar Iraq from importing anything other than food, medicine, and health supplies. By many accounts, it has reduced a once-wealthy economy to shambles. The sanctions were to have been lifted after U.N. weapons inspectors certified that Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons had been destroyed. But the certification process has not been completed, at least in part because the Iraqis have not allowed the inspectors to do their work.” - March 13, 1998

“The latest sign that the sanctions are nearing their end transpired during Iraqi Deputy Premier Tarek Aziz’s visit to Moscow last month. During his meeting with Aziz, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Moscow would seek to lift the sanctions, and this was reiterated by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who also said that Moscow would do its best to unblock Russian contracts with Iraq held up by the UN sanctions committee — under U.S. pressure, of course.” - August 7, 2000

“Legally the sanctions were introduced against Iraq based on the suspicion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Therefore from a purely legal point of view, those sanctions can only be lifted once clarity has been established that no such weapons exist” - Vladimir Putin, April 29, 2003

Links in this entry:

Iraq: A Decade of Sanctions
Putin refuses to back Blair on Iraq
The Impact of Sanctions

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