As the Bush administration pushes for a UN Security Council resolution vote on Iraq, the following analysts are available for interviews:
DENIS HALLIDAY
Halliday is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and headed the UN’s food-for-oil program in Iraq. Available for limited interviews, Halliday said today: “Even if the Iraqis wanted to comply — and it’s not clear to me that they do — I doubt that they could comply with this resolution. It has components that are simply geared toward Mr. Bush’s war. If the Iraqis close the door on an inspector in a bike shop at 3 in the morning, that could be used as a pretext, as being in ‘material breach,’ for war. It’s likely that at some point [the U.S.’s UN ambassador John] Negroponte will use confused wording to argue that Iraq is in material breach and the U.S. will say one thing and the rest of the world another. Many paragraphs of this new resolution are simply dripping with double standards — much in this resolution should apply to all states in the region violating Security Council resolutions and possessing weapons of mass destruction. Whether or not Iraq complies, it is a country under threat and has a right to defend itself.”
PHYLLIS BENNIS
Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis is author of the new book Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis.
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RAHUL MAHAJAN
Mahajan is author of the book The New Crusade: America’s War Against Terrorism.
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FRANCIS BOYLE
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
MICHAEL RATNER
President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today: “This is a resolution that will allow the U.S. to argue that it alone can decide the consequences, including war, for any failure by Iraq to adhere to the new inspection regime. The U.S. gets its ‘material breach’ language; it gets its ‘serious consequences’ language and there is no clear, unambiguous statement that it is for the UN and not the U.S. to determine the consequences for any Iraqi failure to comply with the resolution.”
JIM JENNINGS
Jennings is president of Conscience International, an aid organization that has worked in Iraq.
JAMES PAUL
Executive director of the Global Policy Forum, which monitors global policy-making at the United Nations, Paul is the author of a series of papers including “Iraq: The Struggle for Oil.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
