Denis Halliday resigned as the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN in 1998 after 34 years of service. His actions were mostly in response to the immense unjustifiable suffering he witnessed in Iraq following the sanctions imposed on the country after their invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War. In this recent interview Halliday continues his new mission to provide information and expertise highlighting the real situation in Iraq and the driving forces behind a new war.

In his interview Halliday briefly mentions three areas of concern; the effect of war and sanctions on Iraq, the potential war and prospects of a regime change, and the status of the UN.

Firstly, Halliday considers the inhumane conditions present in Iraq due to the severe sanctions imposed on the country. He contends that the Iraqi people have been living in a semi-famine and according to UNICEF reports there have been over 500,000 additional deaths for children in the 0-5 year old category. Halliday maintains that the sanctions are the principal cause of the hardship and that the people of Iraq should not be have to pay for the mistakes made by the government ruling the country.

In conjunction with this Halliday emphasizes the double standards that compound tensions in the Middle East. To demonstrate, Halliday uses the example of Israel who invaded and occupied Lebanon for 22 years but did not receive any sanctions and were certainly not invaded by the US and allies to overthrow the offensive regime. Yet following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Iraq were immediately attacked in the US-led Gulf War, they then received 12 years of sanctions plus continued bombing of the country and are now under threat from another war. The inequality rages.

In terms of regime change, Halliday agrees that Iraq could benefit from a new leadership. However he asserts that this has to be initiated through the Iraqi people and not by President Bush or the UN who do not have the understanding to impose a new government or indeed the right to remove the present Iraqi government. Halliday goes on to explain that if they lifted the sanctions then the people of Iraq would actually have the opportunity to rebuild their shattered economy, entice Iraqi professionals back into the country and establish a multi-partisan state through their own means. Sanctions have simply crippled the country and taken away the human rights and choices of the people there.

Halliday alleges that any new invasion of Iraq is about oil. He states that the US is immensely dependent on oil, and their requirements for the black gold are set to increase over the next 50 years, thus Iraq is a way of meeting the oil demands of the US. The war is not about weapons Halliday argues, for the US sold Iraq the majority of weapons so it knows what weapons Iraq has and the rest were sold to Iraq by the Europeans.

With respect to the United Nations itself, Halliday claims that in the main it has lost total credibility in the Middle East and much of the Third World. According to Halliday the organization needs a dramatic overhaul, with the reform of the powers of the permanent members of the Security Council being at the heart of the movement.