Letter: Don't make Iraqis wait on sanctions
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Responding to the latest showdown in the Gulf, your leading article of 10 October states: 'As to whether sanctions (on Iraq) shuld be lifted, the debate must wait'.
We write out of recent first- hand experience of Iraq, whose ordinary people - Shia, Sunni and Christian, Arab and Kurd - suffer the malnutrition and preventable disease to which sanctions directly contribute.
These were not the objectives of sanctions. Yet many ordinary Iraqis ask what current UN policy is attempting to achieve. While motives and strategic aims remain unclear, the issue of sanctions will be used to provoke tension in the Gulf.
The debate must begin now.
Yours faithfully,
THOMAS BUTLER
Bishop of Leicester
KEITH CLEMENTS
Co-ordinating Secretary for
International Affairs, Council of
Churches for Britain and Ireland
DAVE HAMPSON
Senior Programme Officer
(Gulf), Christian Aid
The Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland
London, SE1
12 October
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