He stopped a UN vehicle in the centre of Baghdad, opened the front door and sat next to one of the inspectors. The police dragged him out by force and took him away. Abdulkareem was screaming loudly: "Please, save me!" The inspectors didn’t interfere. Later many came out with a supposition that the Iraqi young man wanted to pass on to the inspectors an information about the weapons. On the whole, it’s not so important if this was really the case; what is important is that the democratic world has yet again slammed the door in the face of a totalitarian regime victim begging for help. The History teaches nothing.
A few days after this incident Iraqi Ambassador Abbas Halaf Kunfud was holding a press conference in Moscow. I asked him to comment on the details of the incident, if, of course, they were known to him. The Ambassador broke into tirade about how I am acting rudely and incorrectly supposing that something could possibly be unknown to him,
the Iraqi Ambassador. The comment itself was a lot shorter: "The incident is of a private nature".
Totalitarian regimes are always very laconic in cases like this. The question is, how will the UN itself regard the incident? Will it forget? Will it consider the matter settled? The Iraqis who live in exile have appealed to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to save Abdulkareem. They don’t blame the inspectors. On the contrary, they emphasise that there was nothing they could do. Their mandate wouldn’t allow them. Yes, this was the case. But let’s suppose that they did not hand the fellow over but took him to a foreign embassy. It is interesting to know what the Iraqi authorities would have done. Twist the inspectors’ arms? Global consequences of this are not hard to imagine. American squadron is near.
In 1945 Americans and the English handed over to Stalin the Russians who were begging not to send them away into the hell of the GULag, appealing to their humanity. The forceful extradition was conducted in accordance with international agreements made in Yalta. Formally, everything was right. Only Western democracies are still experiencing the sense of shame for their obedience to the law.