UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council Aug 6 registered its outrage over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait by ordering a far reaching trade and financial boycott on Iraq and occupied Kuwait.
The sanctions, approved just five days after the Council condemned the invasion and demanded that Baghdad immediately withdraw its forces, prohibit all United Nations members from buying oil from either Iraq or occupied Kuwait or having virtually any other commercial or financial dealings with them.
The embargo won the support of 130f the Council’s 15 members, including all five of the permanent members, which have veto power in the Council Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union and the United States. Yemen, the only Arab member, and Cuba abstained. But the rest of the Council’s 10 rotating members voted for the sanctions package, including Canada, Finland and Romania, representing the industrialized northern countries, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Zaire from Africa, the single Asian member, Malaysia, and Colombia, which with Cuba forms the Latin American contingent.
This is only the third time in United Nations history that the Council has sought to discipline a country defying its orders by imposing trade sanctions.
The earlier actions involved Rhodesia in 1967, after its unilateral declaration of independence from Britain, and a ban on arms sales to South Africa.
The vote was welcomed by many participants as a sign that the Security Council was emerging from a long period of cold war paralysis and starting to exercise its responsibility under the Charter for enforcing peace and security around the glove.
Britain’s representative, Sir Crispin Tickell, said the Council had “faced its responsibilities” and must now “succeed where the League of Nations failed and the Security Council itself had faltered in the past.”
The United Nations has only limited means of enforcing compliance with today’s sanctions, leaving its members to insure that the measures are respected.
India a close friend of Iraq’s has refused to offer any comment saying it was studying the situation.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 10, 1990
