January 17, 2001
Iraq on Wednesday criticised as a failure the oil-for-food programme, saying it benefited only the United Nations, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) said.
It also accused the United States and Britain of blocking thousands of contracts, worth more than $7 billion, including medicines and supplies for food and sanitation. INA said Iraq's Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told Benon Sevan, executive director of the U.N. humanitarian oil deal and an undersecretary-general, that the oil programme had failed to meet the needs of the Iraqi people.
"The oil-for-food programme has failed in addressing needs of the Iraqi people and it ensures only the needs of the United Nations and compensation imposed on Iraq," Saleh said. "The United Nations has deducted $18 billion since the start of the programme, while Iraq received only $16 billion (in goods), at $3 billion a year," he said.
Earlier, Saleh said the United States and Britain had blocked 2,361 contracts worth $7.23 billion signed under 10 phases of the U.N. oil-for-food programme. "The oil programme, which the American administration and British government claim was initiated to ameliorate the suffering of Iraqi people, has failed to do so and it becomes a burden on Iraq," Saleh said.
He said the oil deal was no substitute for the complete lifting of sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of neighbouring Kuwait. Sevan last week criticised the unprecedented surge of nearly $5 billion in supplies to Iraq which had been blocked, mainly by the United States.
Saleh accuses Washington, London
Saleh also accused Washington and London of doing what they could to harm Iraq through "control of the U.N. Security Council and pressure exercised on the committee to prevent Iraq from benefiting from its own money."
Among contracts on hold, Saleh said, were 711 applications for spare parts and equipment for oil installations, 282 orders for medicines, 202 orders for food and 203 for electricity. They also included contracts for supplies for sanitation, education, agriculture, transport and communications, he said.
The oil-for-food programme allows Baghdad to sell unlimited quantities of oil to buy a host of goods for civilian use. But the oil revenues are controlled by the United Nations, which pays suppliers of the goods Iraq orders. Iraq sold nearly $11 billion worth of oil last year under the programme, an exception to sanctions imposed when Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
Sevan, who arrived in Baghdad on Monday to discuss the programme, said the volume of goods on hold had now reached $4.956 billion. These included 1,265 contracts worth $4.28 billion for humanitarian supplies and 589 contracts worth $676 million for oil industry equipment.
Many of the contracts are approved individually by a Security Council sanctions committee, any one of whose 15 members can block them.
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