
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 18, 1991                   TAG: 9102180082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: AMMAN, JORDAN                                LENGTH: Short

RED CROSS: IRAQ BLOCKS OUR WORK

The Red Cross complained Sunday that Iraq had without justification prevented its representatives from meeting allied prisoners of war and from determining how desperate conditions had become in Iraqi cities.

Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said his group had nine delegates in Baghdad but none in Kuwait.

While the ones in Iraq can move about rather freely, he said, they have been frustrated in their attempts to calculate the number of casualties and the severity of shortages of water, food and other essentials.

As for prisoners of war, Sommaruga told a news conference here that he had "no credible figure" on how many there were and no information about the conditions under which they live.

"There is a certain problem of communication between the ICRC and the Iraqi government," he said. "There is no justification for this delay in our requests to visit these POWs."

Red Cross officials, he said, have been able to visit Iraqi prisoners held in Saudi Arabia by the U.S.-led coalition, as well as "some civilians in Great Britain who are deprived of their movement." He was presumably referring to Iraqi citizens being held by the British.

Sommaruga met on Sunday with the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan in the hope of getting permission to travel to Baghdad, but he came away empty-handed and left for his organization's headquarters in Geneva.

Some international relief workers are entering Iraq.

Three convoys left Jordan on Sunday for Baghdad, including one that brought in five truckloads of medicine.

by CNB