January 11, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 7, 1423

DUBAI, Jan 10: A former official of the United Nations accused the world body of misappropriating $40 billion by using funds meant for Iraq’s oil-for-food programme.

Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General who was the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad in 1998, says Iraq has sold $60 billion of oil under the programme but received less than $20 billion worth of food, medicine and other utility items.

In an exclusive interview, given in Baghdad, to Dubai-based Gulf News, Halliday has blamed the world body for using oil-for- food programme, that destined to provide basic needs to Iraqi people, to “finance a large part of UN system.

“I think the Iraqi experience under UN auspices is so incredibly bad, in my view genocidal, that the UN has done irreparable damage to itself,” he was quoted as saying in Gulf News.

He explained where the $40 billion could have disappeared:

“It has gone into Kuwait, to compensation, to pay for Unscom, Unmovic, and military inspections. It has gone to finance the UN presence in this country with its 4,500 personnel. It is paying for some body’s establishment in New York, Paris and Rome,” he retorted.

He described the situation as ridiculous that Iraqis are treated as refugees in their own country and has to feed themselves with their own money.

Last week the same newspaper had reported similar accusation by quoting Iraqi commercial sources that blamed UN of embezzling $23 billion by “manipulating the $60 billion oil-for-food programme.”

Dr. Mohammed Mehdi Saleh, Iraqi Trade Minister had charged that the UN committee, that oversees the Iraqi boycotts, “was subject to direct intervention by the American Deputy” of the committee and had accused the committee of stopping contracts worth of $17 billion during the past six years.

Denis Halliday has also severely criticized the Security Council describing it as “a body out of control and corrupted by the US.”