Letter: Sanctions `murder'

Letter: Sanctions `murder'

Sir: Patrick Cockburn's recent reports from Iraq highlight the glaring contradiction at the heart of the current UN policy towards Iraq. Saddam Hussein, we are regularly told, is a mass murderer who violates the human rights of his people and has at his disposal weapons of "mass destruction". Yet in order to "weaken" the regime of Saddam, the UN itself has resorted to human rights violations through the use of its weapons of mass destruction: sanctions.

Surely it is not an exaggeration to label the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children, through malnourishment, disease and illness - a direct result of the crippling, unjustified, UN-imposed economic sanctions - as mass murder.

MEHDI HASAN

Harrow, Middlesex