July 7, 1999
Baghdad - A new crisis between Iraq and the United Nations erupted Tuesday as Baghdad demanded the recall of a New Zealand demining expert, accused of trying to destroy Iraq's crops by planting locust eggs.
The ministry called in the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator Hans von Sponek and gave him "a memorandum asking for the departure of the New Zealand national from Iraq within 72 hours," the official INA news agency said.
The move came shortly after the departure from Baghdad of Benon Sevan, the New York-based director of the UN humanitarian programme for Iraq, following a 16-day visit to discuss the UN oil-for-food programme. It is the first such incident since UN arms inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of U.S. and British air strikes.
In a press conference Monday, Sevan said his talks with Iraqi officials had succeeded in "resolving a number of questions and misunderstandings," without elaborating.
Iraq accuses New Zealander Ian Broughton, who supervises demining in the northeastern province of Suleimaniya, of putting "locust eggs, a fatal insect for harvests, in the Khanaqin region" close to the Iraq-Iran border northeast of Baghdad. The foreign ministry said the New Zealander had "in April buried cases containing locust eggs, fatal to cultivation. Residents in the region unearthed the cases and saw they contained locust eggs. This criminal and immoral act is aimed at sabotaging the Iraqi economy."
Iraq has adopted emergency measures to protect this year's grain harvest in the face of one of the worst droughts in more than 60 years.
"The Iraqi government has asked the UN secretary general to carry out an investigation to determine the parties implicated in this crime," and bring the New Zealander to justice, the statement said.
UN officials in New York had no immediate comment.
Demining efforts in northern Iraq, which has remained outside Baghdad's control since the 1991 Gulf War and which is one of the world's most heavily mined areas, have been supervised by the United Nations since the end of 1997.
Iraq in June accused a British UN mine-clearing expert of agricultural sabotage, charging he had planted locusts' eggs to damage harvests in the Khanaqin region in April, although the United Nations denied this.
An Iraqi official told AFP on Tuesday that the new crisis with the United Nations "confirms Iraq's suspicions of some UN members."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the end of June said allegations that UN arms inspectors in Iraq were spying for the United States were justified and could jeopardise future disarmament efforts.
Nearly 70 per cent of Iraq's wheat needs already come through the stretched UN oil-for-food programme that allows the sanctions-hit state to sell limited quantities of crude in return for basic products.
