BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) -- The first U.S. congressman to visit Iraq since the 1991 gulf war on Monday started assessing the humanitarian situation after nearly a decade of U.N. sanctions.
Tony Hall, a 58-year-old Democratic Party congressman from Ohio, visited a children's hospital in Baghdad to examine the effects of sanctions on the health of Iraqi children.Hall, accompanied by a congressional aide and an agricultural consultant, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday after travelling from Amman, Jordan, along the 600-mile desert road to Baghdad. The Iraqi press has played down the visit and published only a brief mention of the delegation's arrival in Monday newspapers.
Hall was briefed by Iraqi doctors on the lack of medicine and equipment. They told him the main cause was the U.N. trade sanctions in effect since Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. He was also shown several cases of leukaemia and children suffering from malnutrition.
"I want to see the humanitarian aspects of the country to understand why so many children are sick," Hall told reporters after touring al-Mansour hospital in central Baghdad which mainly admits cases of leukemia from all over the country.
He also met with Iraq's Health Minister Umeed Madhat Mubarak, although he had said earlier he did not plan to meet any Iraqi officials.
Hall said he wanted to "get a feeling as to why food and medicine is not getting through. What is the whole problem? What is the hang-up? And what can I do to make things better?"
Pressure in Congress for a review of U.S. support for the embargo against Iraq has intensified in recent weeks.
In late January, 70 members of Congress, led by Representative Tom Campbell of California, sent a letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to de-link broad economic sanctions from the military embargo in place against Baghdad.
Hall had said that he would inform Congress of what he saw.
Under the oil-for-food programme with the United Nations, Iraq is allowed to import food and medicine to offset effects of the sanctions. But Baghdad complains that procedures of the oil pact are so complicated that they have made it impossible to address the humanitarian situation.
Iraq blames the U.S. representative on a U.N. sanctions committee for blocking contracts to supply relief needs to the Iraqi people.