12-08-00 Indonesia called for international sanctions against Iraq to be lifted as Venezuela's president, fresh from a trip to Baghdad, made an impassioned plea for the world to take notice of extreme suffering there.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said UN sanctions against Iraq that have been in place since the Persian Gulf War were an injustice and were causing intense misery to the nation's children. "Who has the right to really have an innocent child die there?" he said in an emotional plea. "Let God have pity on the soul of those who act that way." "I think the time has come for it to be over," he said.
Chavez said his son, who is travelling with him on a tour of OPEC countries, visited a mosque in Baghdad and saw a naked child dying from cancer. "They don't have the medical drugs they need to treat him," he said.
Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid said after meeting Chavez at the presidential palace in Jakarta that he would visit Baghdad in the coming months and wanted sanctions against Iraq terminated. "I share President Chavez's sentiments about the Iraqi people," he said. "Because of that Indonesia would like to see the blockade on Iraq to be lifted soon." UNICEF says the number of infant and child deaths in Iraq has doubled in the decade since the sanctions began.

Chavez and Wahid are not alone in calling for an end to strict trade sanctions that the United Nations says will be in place until Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction. High-profile critics include the Vatican, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter -- who now says Iraq is essentially disarmed -- and former UN humanitarian co-ordinators Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who resigned in protest over the sanctions policy.
Chavez met with Saddam Hussein during a brief visit to Baghdad. The trip raised the anger of the United States and Britain -- the primary backers of the sanctions -- which said they were concerned about giving the Iraqi president credibility.
Chavez's visit to Iraq was the first by a head of state since the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq laid out the red carpet for Chavez, trumpeting his visit as a breach of its isolation and a slap in the face for Washington. Venezuelan officials insist the visit was not about international politics, but oil, the country's main export.
Chavez, who is popular at home, has a record of bucking the United States in foreign policy. He has nurtured ties with countries such as Cuba and China and has hailed Libya as a "model of participatory democracy." "Whoever is disturbed by my words, I do not care," Chavez said in Jakarta.

Chavez said the main purpose of his trip was to boost the global clout of the OPEC, saying that after "40 years of OPEC, a new era begins." He hopes to hold a Sept. 27 summit of the heads of state of OPEC countries in Venezuela, the first such meeting since 1975.
Chavez said he invited Saddam to attend the meeting but that the offer was declined "for reasons that are obvious to everyone." He said Wahid had had been invited and had accepted.
Chavez is also seeking backing for maintaining the price of oil, which he says, contrary to the US view, is not too high. "We need fair prices for our oil, for our people," he said. Chavez hopes the price of oil will stay at around $ 25 a barrel. It is currently selling on world markets at about $ 27.50 a barrel.
Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman Sulaiman Abdulmanan said the government strongly supports Chavez on that point.