UN extends Iraq’s oil-for-food plan: US to handle oil income till interim authority
By Our Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, April 25: The UN Security Council on Thursday unanimously extended its oil-for-food programme for Iraq until June 3, but the US has demanded that the control of the programme should be handed over to the interim government in Iraq run by it.
The US is drafting a resolution towards that purpose in order to ensure that proceeds from that programme are put in control of the interim Iraqi authority.
The consequences of any resolution would be to free oil sales and give the United States firm control over contracts and expenditures until an Iraqi government is in place, diplomats here observed. Without Security Council endorsement, no oil firm will sign a contract with an entity that has no legal standing.
So far the programme has some $14 billion in funds. The council authorized UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to expedite emergency health and food supplies to Iraq. Some $400 million worth of goods are en route to Iraq and an additional $130 million are expected by June 3.
Meanwhile Russia has floated its own informal plan that would leave the United Nations in firm control of Iraqi oil revenues until a new government was recognized. France suggested that sanctions be suspended but not lifted immediately and that the UN oil-for-food programme be phased out gradually.
However, overriding some 16 UNSC resolutions that the United States helped craft over the last decade, is expected to be opposed by a majority of council members and once again force Britain into the role of seeking a compromise.
Mr Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico’s UN ambassador and the current council president, said on Thursday most members did not want the oil-for-food programme stopped abruptly because 60 per cent of the Iraqi people were entirely dependent on it.
“We feel that it should be phased out gradually because we cannot terminate a programme that has such significance for such a large proportion of the population,” he told reporters.
In a report on Friday the Washington Post, said that the Bush administration advisers on Wednesday adopted the Pentagon’s proposal for eliminating all UN controls over Iraq, rather than the State Department’s preferred step-by-step approach.
Distributions would be monitored by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. But the paper said the Iraqi Central Bank would be in charge of profits from oil, some of which would be spent on reconstruction designated by the Pentagon-run Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance or by the Iraqi Interim Authority.
The US-drafted resolution would also ask Mr Annan to appoint a special representative, who would work with American officials in Baghdad but apparently have little power. Mr Annan so far has refused American requests to do this, arguing that the Security Council would have to make a decision and Washington would have to spell out clearly what the envoy would do.
But most of Security Council members believe that sanctions should only be lifted after the UN weapons inspectors declare it free of weapons of mass destruction. However, the US does not want the inspectors back blaming them for not coming up with a “smoking gun” that would have given ammunition to the war plans.
