Posted on 03/21/2003 1:16:50 PM PST by JohnHuang2
UN works on weekend to adjust Iraq oil, food plan
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, March 21 (Reuters) - Security Council members decided on Friday to work through the weekend on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's plan to put him in charge of a humanitarian program for Iraq that uses oil revenues to pay for food, medicine and other civilian goods.
A resolution is expected to emerge on Monday after discussions among Middle East experts of the 15 council members sitting on a council committee set up to monitor the now-suspended oil-for-food program. The plan was created to ease the impact of U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq in mid-1990.
The United States and Britain, which had wanted to draw up the measure, have now declined to do so. A council diplomat told reporters any resolution would have a better chance
"without their fingerprints" in a Security Council bitterly divided over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Germany's U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, chairman of the committee and a leading opponent of the war, said there were no fundamental problems in adjusting the oil-for-food program so that basic goods could flow again to Iraq as soon as possible.
"There are no points of contention," he said following Security Council consultations on the program. "There are only practical problems."
But members are expected to be careful the new resolution concentrates on immediate humanitarian aid rather than the future working of the program. U.N. officials point to some $8.9 billion in goods already ordered and paid for by Iraq but not yet delivered.
More than 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people are entirely dependent on the oil-for-food program, which has been jointly administered by the United Nations and Iraq since 1996. U.N. officials estimate Iraqis have enough food to meet immediate needs unless they are forced out of their homes.
OIL INDUSTRY CONTROL SENSITIVE
Annan, in his letter to the council on Thursday, said Iraq should continue to control the country's oil industry, retaining the right to sign contracts with partners of its choosing. The proceeds of those sales, however, should be deposited in an account controlled by the United Nations, as they were before the war.
But diplomats said the resolution would probably avoid reference to oil exports while the war was going on.
The council is trying to avoid, at present, dealing with or recognizing any possible U.S. administration at the end of the war, which might administer Iraq's oil wealth.
Russia's ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters the resolution had to deal "with immediate concerns of goods already in the pipeline."
"Other ideas of the secretary-general would have to come later," he said. "We should not jump the gun."
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte emphasized again that the United States wanted the oil to be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
"At such time as the present Iraqi regime should fall ... we will ensure that Iraq's natural resources, including its oil, are used entirely for the benefit of the people of Iraq," he told reporters.
Annan had proposed that once exports resumed, the council should leave oil sales in the hands of the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, which had a sophisticated infrastructure.
The United States and Britain fought for years to eliminate fly-by-night traders from getting contracts from SOMO, believing they were paying illegal premiums to President Saddam Hussein. But Russia and others blocked that.
Puts Tony Soprano to shame huh?
It was never in the UN's interest to oust Saddam, end sanctions, change regiems, or do anything other than prolong the misery of the Iraqi people.
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