February 13, 2002
Following a request from United States and British representatives, the United Nations panel in charge of enforcing the Iraq embargo suspended last week 52 contracts with a total value of 79 million U.S. dollars, the official Iraq News Agency (INA) reported Wednesday.
The deals were concluded earlier between the Iraqi government and foreign suppliers under the provisions of the oil-for-food plan, INA said, quoting statistics compiled by the New York-based Iraq Programme office. The new suspensions raised to 4.58 billion dollars the total value of contracts blocked by Committee 661 since the oil-for-food programme was launched in December 1996, the Iraqi agency said.
"The American and British representatives in the panel used to cite baseless pretexts, such as double uses of the goods and lack of information, in order to block the adoption of the deals with a view to increasing the sufferings of the besieged Iraqi people," INA said.
Under the oil-for-food plan, the U.N. Security Council allows Iraq to export the equivalent of 5.26 billion dollars of crude oil every six months, with 65 per cent of the proceeds used for financing the purchase of badly-needed food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.
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