US breaching Geneva Conventions over Iraq N-plant: Greenpeace
AFP, Baghdad
Environmental group Greenpeace accused US-led authorities in Iraq Friday of breaching international law and refusing to allow United Nations experts to assess contamination at a nuclear plant near Baghdad. The group says it has detected worrying levels of radioactivity in schools and homes around the Tuwaitha nuclear plant, around 20 km east of the capital, but that the coalition refuses to recognise the problem. The head of the group's Iraq investigation team, Mike Townsley, said the US-led occupation authority was breaching the Geneva Conventions "by failing in its responsibility to ensure the public health of the Iraqi people". The conventions lay out the legal obligations of an occupying power, as well as the rules of war and treatment of prisoners. Townsley said that coalition authorities were ignoring what he called an urgent environmental health crisis caused by a "frightening array of radioactive material".
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