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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
______________________IRAQ____________________
Children dying
Government blames Western sanctions
Iraq’s health minister, visiting Rome in January, renewed his government’s complaint that international sanctions have crippled the country’s ability to deal with medical problems.
Umeed Mubarak said that despite a UN program that allows oil to be sold for food and medical supplies, the medicine that reaches the country is inadequate, and doctors lack vital materials such as hypodermic syringes and full courses of drugs. “Cancer among children has risen six percent; the average citizen is living on 1,000 calories a day; the amount of medicine arriving in Iraq is 42 percent of what we need,” he told the head of Italy’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee. Mubarak later met Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini who reiterated Italy’s support for a change in the Western policies, so that the burden of the sanctions would fall on the Baghdad government rather than the impoverished Iraqi people. Supporters of the sanctions point out that the ruling Ba’ath Party of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has had the resources to build several new palaces for Hussein and provide other luxury items for party members.