Sir, - You referred in your excellent Editorial of August 4th) to Saddam Hussein's attacks on the country's Kurdish and Shia minorities. The Shia constitute an oppressed majority, not a minority in Iraq. Together with the Kurds, they constitute about 75 per cent of the population.
The issue of the sanctions should always be related to their cause, namely Saddam Hussein. Your Editorial is balanced because it highlights the suffering of the innocent Iraqi people as a result of the sanctions but also as a result of Saddam's misadventures and human rights abuses. This contrasts with what Mr Denis Halliday wrote (Opinion, August 11th). He has all the correct intentions but seems to be caught in a knee-jerk anti-imperialist/anti-USA ideological reaction to such an extent that I fear he may have lost the plot.
I have no doubt about his humanitarian concerns for the suffering of the people of Iraq but he seems loath to criticise the Iraqi regime for its responsibility in starting wars, invading neighbouring countries, chemical-bombing its own people and defying international law. It is because of the latter that the unfortunate sanctions came into existence.
What should be called for is the removal of the economic sanctions from the people of Iraq, but also the maintenance of the military and diplomatic sanctions against Saddam and his Ba'ath regime. The distribution of food and medicine should be taken away from the regime, which has maintained its own internal sanctions, and given to the UN. Childhood mortality in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq is much lower than in the rest of the country. This is an area not under Saddam's control where the distribution of food and medicine is supervised by the UN. There should also be a way of accessing the approximately $8 billion from the oil for food programme that is sitting idle in escrow French accounts, in addition to the regime's frozen assets abroad. This money could be used to help both the starving Iraqi masses within the country and those languishing in refugee camps (mainly in Iran and Saudi Arabia).
Finally, the regime of Saddam and his henchmen has to be brought to task for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. This can only happen if he and his regime are indicted by the International Criminal Court. The Iraqi people should be supported in every way in their struggle to free themselves from this national socialist Ba'ath nightmare which has lasted for over 30 years. Only when Iraq is free of Saddam, with the beginnings of a democracy, can it be at peace. - Yours, etc.,
Mohammed Alsadr, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.