by S.D.R., "il manifesto", March 14, 1998

A resolution voted unanimously presses the U.N. to create a tribunal to condemn the Iraqi dictator, a move which shows the anger against Kofi Annan, responsible for having avoided war. Until now, rather than paying the 1.6 million dollars of debt to the U.N., the U.S. senate - increasingly affected by the world sheriff syndrome and increasingly enraged with Kofi Annan who has stopped (for the moment) the war against Iraq - has recently approved unanimously a resolution demanding the incrimination and trial for "war crimes" of the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The resolution invites President Clinton to urge the U.N. to create an international tribunal to try the Baghdad "Rais" and his main collaborators for war crimes. The vote has a symbolic value and signals the frustration of the Washington Congress before the incapability shown by the U.S. to sort out the "Saddam problem" once and for all. "The incrimination of Saddam Hussein, although he won’t be physically present in court, may provide the United States with an important moral platform," the republican senator Arlen Specter explained, one of the most obtuse super-vultures and promoter of the resolution. The Congress believes that trying Saddam Hussein as a war criminal would have the advantage of concentrating attention upon the "crimes" committed by the Iraqi president. "The only ceremony which deserves Saddam Hussein’s participation is his trial for war crimes, which should be organised by the United Nations" (if really one couldn’t do the same as with Panama’s Noriega, who was abducted and then tried in Miami), stated the democratic senator and promoter Byron Dorgan. As a response, Iraq could well demand to bring Clinton before an international tribunal for crimes against humanity, given that sanctions have caused until now - rather than Saddam’s fall - the death through famine, hardship and disease of over one million Iraqis, sixty percent of whom are children.

The vote of the Senate has arrived while the Congress continues to manifest its scarce enthusiasm for Annan’s attempts to settle the differences between Baghdad and Washington on the question of the Iraqi "presidential sites." The inspections will continue until the end of March as announced yesterday by the head of UNISCOM, the Australian Richard Butler, who spoke of a "new spirit" of collaboration with Baghdad.