Iraq is currently drawing up its plan on how to distribute revenues from the 11th and latest phase of the UN oil-for-food program, Trade Minister Mohammad Mehdi Saleh said Monday, December 10. Saleh gave no further details of the plan, which allocates oil revenues to different sectors such as food, health and infrastructure, and will be presented to the United Nations.
In the past, the plan has been behind many of the differences between Iraq and the United Nations. Iraq signed an agreement with the United Nations on December 3 renewing the "oil-for-food" program into what is likely to be its final six-month phase before radical reforms come into force.
"It does not ease the suffering of the Iraqis, as the United States and Britain pretend," said Saleh, who last week accused the UN sanctions committee of blocking six billion dollars worth of contracts concluded within the program. The humanitarian program allows Iraq to sell crude under UN supervision to meet the humanitarian needs of its people, who have been hard hit by the sanctions imposed on the country since Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Iraq argues, however, the program does not meet its 22-million population's most basic needs and should not be a substitute for lifting the UN embargo. It regularly accuses US and British representatives on the sanctions committee of blocking contracts for imports into Iraq. — (AFP, Baghdad)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
