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‘Iraq abuses go against international law’

* EU, Latin American and Caribbean nations slam all forms of abuses

GUADALAJARA: The US occupation of Iraq, bogged down by fierce armed resistance and a scandal over prisoner abuse, faces a new round of international criticism on Friday at a European and Latin American summit.

Dozens of leaders at the meeting were to condemn the sexual abuse and humiliation of inmates by American soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Videotapes and photographs of the mistreatment have battered US President George W Bush’s election-year approval ratings, alienated public sentiment in the Arab world and led even US allies in Iraq to join protests. “We express our horror at recent evidence of the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraqi jails. These abuses go against international law,” said a draft declaration at the summit of European Union, Latin American and Caribbean nations.

“We energetically condemn all forms of abuse, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against people, including prisoners of war,” it said.

Pope John Paul condemned torture as an intolerable affront to human dignity on Thursday in thinly veiled criticism of US troops in Iraq. The 58-nation summit brings together some of the fiercest critics of the Iraq war - French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - with over a dozen nations that have troops in the US-led coalition there.

But two of Bush’s closest European allies - Britain’s Tony Blair and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi - stayed away. Chirac, who led European opposition to the Iraq war last year, added pressure on Bush even before landing in Mexico’s western city of Guadalajara.

He said a US-backed resolution at the United Nations on the powers of an Iraqi caretaker government needed “serious improvement” and told Washington to give the interim government full sovereignty, even over the operations of US military forces. About a dozen EU nations have troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq, including seven Central and East European states among the 10 members that joined the EU on May 1.

But most have little more than a symbolic presence in Iraq. Four Latin American nations sent troops, but most have since been pulled out.

Bush was also under fire over the US economic embargo against Cuba. Latin American nations wanted to directly name the United States in condemning unilateral actions undermining trade and free markets, although the Europeans argued for more general language that did not point directly at Washington. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque condemned European nations at the summit of “a lack of solidarity, egoism and, above all, their lack of political courage.” reuters

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