5:16 PM 11/4/1996

Iraq's Children

Saddam builds palaces while youngsters die

Dreadful tales of sickness and starvation are coming out of Iraq.

The United Nations has issued an appeal to the world for $40 million to obtain food and medicine for Iraq's neediest. Two million Iraqis dependent on U.N. food donations are at risk as donated food supplies diminish.

UNICEF, the U.N. children's organization, reports that 4,500 Iraqi youngsters under the age of 5 are dying each month from starvation or disease.

Iraqi officials blame the poverty and strife being felt by the Iraqi people on U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But the fault lies with Saddam Hussein's lack of care or concern for his own people.

While the sanctions prevent Iraq from selling oil as it once did, Iraq is far from broke.

Nicholas Burns, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, says that Saddam is "letting children die because he prefers to build palaces for him and his family."

In the past four years, Saddam has spent $2 billion on 48 palaces for himself and his family, a yacht and in rebuilding his army, Burns says.

The Iraqi dictator could have used these funds to buy food and medicine on the international market, if he had even the slightest care for the people he rules.

Furthermore, the United Nations would lift its embargo if Saddam ever complied with the cease-fire provisions that call for him to destroy all means of making weapons of mass destruction. U.N. inspectors continually face delays and the runaround in trying to sniff out Iraqi weapons and weapon-making materials and facilities.

The world is horrified by the suffering and starvation in Iraq of innocent children and Iraqis.

But the world is not to blame. Saddam is.