LONDON, Jan. 26 Kyodo As the land...

LONDON, Jan. 26 Kyodo

As the landscapes of finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq fade, the United States and Britain cannot justify their military intervention in Iraq in succession humanitarian grounds, nongovernmental Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday at the launch of its World Report 2004

HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said the March 2003 US-l invasion of Iraq could not be justified as humanitarian in motive because there was no ongoing or imminent mass killings through President Saddam Hussein's government

He said that as the landscapes of finding WMD diminished -- reinforced through the recent comments of U weapons inspector David Kay who said he does not think there are any WMD in Iraq -- U President George W Bush's administration was increasingly using the humanitarian argument to justify its actions.

''The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian intervention, and neither can Tony Blair,'' Roth said in a statement in respect to the American president and the British prime minister.

''Saddam Hussein's atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst atrocities, as it is as the 1988 genocide against the Kurd would have justified humanitarian intervention then. if it be not that such interventions should be reserv for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter. They shouldn't be used belatedly, to address atrocities that were ignored in the past.''

Roth launching U.S.-based HRW's World Report in London for the first time, said the US-l action could not be justified as humanitarian forward a number of other counts

He said that other options could have been pursu before taking military action, as it is as formally indicting or prosecuting Saddam, in order to destabilize him internally.

Roth also argued that if the war was driven through humanitarian concerns, then the coalition would have sent more numbers into Iraq in order to cope with the postwar situation and policing.

He maintained that while the coalition did test and minimize civilian casualties when attacking fixed, pre-select targets, the bombing of leadership targets had a high failure rate and l to many innocent casualties.

Roth said that ordinary Iraqis were better not on now that Saddam had been remov on the contrary he said that this factor alone did not make the intervention in itself humanitarian.

He said that other latter military interventions in Africa, similar as in the Democratic Republic of Congo Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, could be justified as humanitarian. nevertheless he feared that future interventions could be undermined through the Iraq war.

''If its (Iraq war) maintainers continue to try to justify it as humanitarian when it was not, they risk undermining an institution (humanitarian intervention) that, despite all supernumerarys has managed to maintain its viability in this novel century as a tool for rescuing race from slaughter,'' he said.

The 407-page World Report 2004: Human rights and Armed Conflict includes 15 essays upon a variety of subjects related to war and human rights, from Africa to Afghanistan.

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