MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE

UNCLAS HARARE 001672 SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/PDPA FOR DALTON, MITCHELL AND SIMS IRAQ PD FOR SMITH, PINESS AND ROOKARD NSC FOR JENDAYI FRAZER LONDON FOR GURNEY PARIS FOR NEARY NAIROBI FOR PFLAUMER E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL KPAO KMDR ZI SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION IRAQ; HARARE ¶1. Under headline "U. N. abuse by UK and U. S. must be probed" the August 24 edition of the government- controlled weekly "The Sunday Mail" carried the following opinion piece by Tafataona Mahoso under his regular column "African Focus": ¶2. "For those nations who seek to advance and uphold international humanitarian ideals and principles, the real tragedy of the recent attack on the U. N. headquarters in Iraq is that Iraqis can no longer separate UK-U. S. objectives in the aggression against Iraq and the occupation of that country from the U. N. mission which is supposed to be neutral and strictly humanitarian. The problem is that the rightwing administrations of President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have criminally made the U. N. an accomplice of their illegal occupation of Iraq. . .The Iraqi people need to be rescued from all illegal aggression and occupation which has resulted in the theft of their petroleum. . .and the U. N. also requires rescuing from its perceived complicity in the U. S.-UK crime against the people of Iraq. . .The African Union should persuade all those opposed to the unipolar doctrine to convene an emergency session of the U. ¶N. General Assembly to stop the U. S.-UK subversion and prostitution of the U. N. This should be done for the sake of the Iraqi people. . . ." SULLIVAN