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| October 25, 2001 03:56 PM ET |
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By Richard Valdmanis UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations accused Iraq on Thursday of smuggling some $10 million worth of oil in violation of U.N. sanctions regulations by loading the petroleum into a tanker after U.N. inspectors disembarked. In 19 pages of documents submitted to the Security Council's Iraqi sanctions committee, Benon Sevan, head of the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program, said some 500,000 barrels of oil were loaded onto the tanker Essex last May and August from the port of Mina Al-Bakr. Iraq denied the accusations. In a written response, Baghdad's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, said the Iraqi oil marketing organization found that all papers were in order and it had "no information on the subject of your letter." The incident is the first alleged proof Sevan's office has submitted on illegal oil sales, which oil traders say has been occurring for about a year. Most of the information came from Greek Capt. Chiladakis Thofanis on the tanker Essex and was sent to the United Nations and the U.S. Embassy in Athens. Under the U.N.-controlled oil-for-food program, revenues from oil sales are to be deposited in a U.N. account out of which the United Nations pays suppliers of food, medicine and a host of other goods Iraq has ordered. The program, an exception to 11-year-old sanctions, is designed to ease the impact of the embargoes, imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. (emphasis mine) "The ships involved first loaded the quantities of oil, which were authorized under the program," Sevan said in his letter to the Security Council's sanctions panel. "Subsequent to this, and after United Nations inspection agents had finalized their activities on board of the ships, the load pumps on the platform were allegedly restarted in order to load additional volumes of oil on the vessels," Sevan wrote, citing evidence received from the vessel's captain. In both cases, May 16 and Aug. 27, the ship was chartered by international commodities trader Trafigura. Officials at the company were not immediately available for comment. Mina Al-Bakr is a major Iraq oil port, loading roughly 1.2 million barrels of Basrah light crude every day, with most supplying the United States. The United States has ships in the Gulf that attempt to inspect cargo coming to and leaving Iraq. But the documents did not say if the Essex had been stopped by U.S. vessels. The U.N. Security Council has been at loggerheads in trying to stop the smuggling, with Russia, an ally of Iraq, having insisted there was little proof. Moscow has also blocked a revision of sanctions, proposed by Britain and the United States, which would ease civilian imports to Iraq while tightening controls on smuggling oil and prohibited weapons. Instead it wants steps toward lifting the sanctions entirely. The oil-for-food program is up for renewal on Nov. 30 when U.S. officials say they will attempt to push through the measures again. But unless Moscow has changed its policy, diplomats said Washington would probably delay its efforts in November rather than risk the embarrassment of another defeat. "This might slip past November again," one U.S. official said in Washington. (Evelyn Leopold contributed to this report)
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