National News Bush urges the lifting of sanctions on Iraq despite continued violence

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U.S. President George W. Bush called April 16 for the lifting of punishing U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime now that it has collapsed.

The United States has refused to rule the war over, but Bush said the United Nations should lift sanctions so Iraq could trade its oil on world markets without U.N. control.

Mosul, the oil-rich northern city populated by a fractious mix of Kurds and Muslims, demonstrates the difficulties the U.S. forces are experiencing in keeping the peace.

U.S. forces conceded their soldiers had shot and killed more than seven people in the city of Mosul on April 15, when they returned fire on demonstrators who were shooting guns and hurling rocks.

U.S. forces said they had achieved "yet another victory in the global war on terrorism" with the capture of Abu Abbas, who was seized April 14 when U.S. troops stormed his hideout in southern Baghdad, where he had been living under Hussein's protection.

Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, is accused of having masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro.

Washington, meanwhile, said Faruq Hijazi, a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer suspected of plotting to kill former president George Bush in 1993, had been spotted in Damascus. A U.S. official said he was among "at least a handful" of former members of the Iraqi elite currently in Syria.

Damascus denied the allegations as "absolutely groundless."

French President Jacques Chirac said the European Union planned to organize an airlift to allow Iraqi civilians wounded in the war to receive medical treatment in Europe.

Meeting on the margins of an EU enlargement ceremony in Athens, heads of state and government including Washington's key war ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, agreed that the United Nations should be central to Iraq's reconstruction.

But the extent to which the United Nations, or the European Union itself, will be involved in Iraq's reconstruction depended on a deeply skeptical United States.

米、対イラク制裁解除呼びかけ

イラク戦争が最終局面を迎える中、ブッシュ米大統領は、フセイン政権が崩壊したイラクに対する国連の制裁解除を求めた。

Shukan ST: April 25, 2003

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