The New York Times

Friday, September 24, 1999

Iraqi Exile Says U.S. Plans Genocide Charges Against Saddam

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

UNITED NATIONS -- A leader of Iraq's opposition movement in exile said Thursday that U.S. officials are planning to pursue genocide and war-crimes charges against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the interim presidency of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of exile groups, said that he and other Iraqi exiles discussed prospects for prosecuting Saddam during a meeting in New York on Monday with David Scheffer, the Clinton administration's ambassador at large for war crimes, and Harold Koh, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

Several American officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed that the meeting had taken place and did not deny that the prospect has been considered.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also met Monday with the delegation from the Iraqi National Congress. Congress has authorized $97 million to be used to assist such Iraqi opposition groups.

The United States has accused Saddam of destroying more than 3,000 Kurdish villages, killing more than 5,000 Kurds with poison gas, killing Shiite Muslim clergymen and forcibly relocating civilians in southern Iraq, and executing more than 2,500 prisoners in the last four years.

It was unclear how Washington would pursue a case since an international criminal court does not exist to bring the Iraqi leader to trial. Such a step would also require a measure of support from the Security Council.

A Western diplomat familiar with the issue said that a commission of inquiry could be set up to gather evidence against the Iraqi leader, creating legal grounds for the kind of prosecutions that led to the detention of the former Chilean dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in Britain last year.

Chalabi, an Iraqi mathematician living in London, said that exile groups have been asked by Washington to collect material that could be used to strengthen the case against Saddam.

He said that Washington already has about 5.5 million individual documents from Iraqi security police records, many of them captured by Kurdish forces since the Persian Gulf war, and that some single out specific villages and individuals that became targets of repression.

The question of Iraq preoccupied the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- who were unable to bridge their differences Thursday on a resolution opening the way for U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq.

After meeting with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the foreign ministers issued a statement saying they wanted to find "a way forward" to adopt a comprehensive resolution that would take into account "the disarmament and humanitarian objectives" of the Security Council.

The split has developed over how to assure Iraq's compliance in disclosing the full extent of its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and long-range missile programs, as Security Council resolutions have repeatedly demanded since Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Differences have also arisen over the extent to which economic sanctions should be loosened to alleviate suffering among the Iraqi people.

A draft resolution being circulated by Britain and the Netherlands reiterates the council's position that sanctions cannot be lifted until Iraq has demolished its weapons of mass destruction. The resolution is supported by the United States and eight other members. But France, Britain and China, who all have veto power, want a less stringent yardstick applied for Iraqi cooperation. Malaysia is said to be undecided.

The draft reportedly also proposes raising the cap on Iraqi oil output to allow purchases of more food and medicine under U.N. auspices. Other provisions would suspend sanctions on some other Iraqi imports, but with tight financial controls and renewable periods of four months or so, conditional upon Iraq's compliance. Baghdad said it would not accept any plan that does not lift sanctions.

The foreign ministers' joint statement Thursday said that they were instructing their representatives on the Security Council to resolve the remaining differences and reach agreement on a new resolution as soon as possible.

"I don't think we expected to reach agreement this week," said James Rubin, the State Department spokesman. "The fact that the ministers discussed it and urged that agreement be reached should give a boost to the effort to re-establish the Security Council consensus on the critical issue of getting inspectors back into Iraq."