Five Defy U.S. Ban To Aid Iraq Relief Workers Deliver Medicine And Toys At Baghdad Hospital

Five American aid workers who defied a U.S. ban on travel to Iraq spent Christmas Eve giving out toys to patients at a children’s hospital in Baghdad.

The members of the Chicago-based charity Voices in the Wilderness arrived in Iraq on Sunday with gifts and $40,000 worth of medicine.

Their visit broke the travel ban and export restrictions to the country.

“We are delivering antibiotics, aspirins and vitamins to help save the lives of few Iraqi children,” Richard McDowell, 45, from Akron, Ohio, said at Saddam’s Children’s Hospital, where the group distributed presents and medicine Wednesday.

“According to the U.S. government, this is a criminal act. At the same time, the sanctions have taken the lives of 600,000 Iraqi children under the age of five … is this not a crime?” he asked.

McDowell was referring to Iraqi government claims that U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.

U.N. reports have concluded that the sanctions have caused widespread malnutrition.

McDowell and his team also intend to distribute medicine at hospitals in the southern provinces of Amara and Basra.

Security Council diplomats say the sanctions will not be lifted until Iraq has satisfied U.N. arms inspectors that it has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq says it has done so, and accuses the United States of prolonging the sanctions for political reasons.

Meanwhile, the newspaper of the ruling Baath party said Wednesday that Iraq will not allow U.N. arms monitors into Saddam’s palaces despite the Security Council’s call to do so.

The daily Al-Thawra, which is often used to express the government’s views, said the council had no right to ask Iraq to permit inspections of these sites, terming the demand totally unacceptable.