The United States sharply criticised France for allowing a flight to Iraq despite UN sanctions. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher called the flight - the first in a decade to land in Baghdad without the approval of the United Nations - a blatant violation of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. “We fail to understand why the French government, which has discussed this at the United Nations for some time, could not wait 12 hours to gain sanctions committee approval of the flight, Boucher said on Friday in a statement. He said that the flight was in clear defiance of the United Nations and its established procedures and that the United States would make an issue of it in the UN Security Council. The chartered French plane carried some 60 physicians, athletes and artists from Paris to Saddam International Airport despite a request by the United States, Britain and the UN sanctions committee to wait for clearance.
“It's the only instance I can remember of a flight being notified to the committee but then going against the procedures of the committee to wait for 24 hours,” Britain's UN Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock said in New York. He called it a pity.

Bureau Report