March 26, 2002
A senior US diplomat arrived in Moscow Tuesday for talks aimed at dispelling persistent differences with Russia over a new "smart sanctions" regime against Iraq, Russian media reported.
US Undersecretary of State John Wolf, head of the State Department's non-proliferation bureau, was leading the US delegation in a third session of talks beginning Wednesday aimed at resolving the issue of humanitarian aid supplies ahead of a May 30 deadline.
He is to meet a Russian team headed by Yury Fedotov of the foreign ministry's international organisations department. Unnamed Russian sources quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency said the two sides remained "far apart" in their efforts to reach a common position ahead of a key UN Security Council meeting at the end of May.
The talks, which began in December, have "taken a turn for the worse" with Russian negotiators accusing the US side of failing to take account of traditional Russian trading interests with Iraq, they said. Efforts to resolve differences over unblocking Russian humanitarian aid contracts within the framework of the UN sanctions committee were proceeding "extremely slowly," the sources said.
"We are far from reaching an agreement" on a revised list of products to be embargoed, one source said. During the second round of talks which took place in Geneva in early February, the United States reportedly agreed to unblock a series of Iraqi-Russian contracts, and unofficial sources in Moscow said that "progress was made" at the meeting.
Russia, a major Iraqi trading partner, is particularly concerned that the value of Russia-Iraq contracts frozen by the United Nations had risen to 860 million dollars (995 million euros). The oil-for-food programme, set up in 1996 to ease the hardships on Iraq's civilian population by the economic sanctions imposed following Baghdad's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, is due to expire at the end of May.
It was designed to allow Iraq to export limited amounts of petrol to buy food and medical supplies. Iraqi Oil Minister Amer Rashid, visiting Moscow last week, described Russia and Iraq as "strategic partners." He said the value of Russian exports to Iraq under the oil-for-food regime reached two billion dollars during the 10th half-year of the programme.
A UN Security Council resolution passed last November called for the adoption by May 30 of a goods review list designed to prevent Baghdad from importing goods with a military potential. Russia has overtaken France and Egypt as Iraq's top importer during the past five years. Baghdad has also announced plans to award Russian companies contracts worth a total of 40 billion dollars to help develop the Iraqi oil and gas, petrochemical and industrial sectors.
But as long as the sanctions remain in place, Russia will remain unable to benefit from the most lucrative deals.
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