May 11, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 8, 1424

WASHINGTON, May 10: US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday urged the United Nations to quickly end trading sanctions against Iraq, so the country’s crude oil can be exported to free up storage space for domestic gasoline and cooking oil.

Within the next couple of weeks, the (Iraqi) oil fields will be producing a sufficient quantity of oil that it will very shortly fill all of the storage capacity in the area, Powell told reporters after talks with the emir of Qatar.

Powell said the oil has to be shipped so Iraq’s refineries will have storage facilities to hold other petroleum products used by Iraqi consumers.

We don’t want the refineries to shut down, because the refineries produce gasoline and cooking gas and the other things that are needed by the people of Iraq, he said.

He also said exporting Iraq’s oil will provide needed revenue to boost the country’s economy and help its people.

We hope that our colleagues in the (UN) Security Council will see it in that light, and will act quickly along with us to relieve the burden of sanctions from the people of Iraq and allow us to use oil revenues to benefit the people of Iraq as well, Powell said.

Iraqi oil exports were nearly 2 million barrels per day before the US led military action basically shut down the country’s oil sector, which is now resuming production.

Iraq’s oil exports fall under the control of a special UN program that had allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. The rest of Iraq’s economy was subject to UN sanctions imposed after the country’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Separately, the US State Department said on Friday it was up to the Iraqis appointed to run their country’s oil sector under US and UK military occupation to decide whether to honor contracts with Russian and Chinese energy companies to develop Iraq’s oil fields which were entered into by former leader Saddam Hussein.

That would be something for the Iraqis to go through, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters when he was asked if the United States would accept the oil development deals signed by the Saddam regime.

The Iraqis are now in charge again of their oil ministry ... they have responsibility for those decisions, they’ll have to make them, Boucher said.

Under Saddam, Iraq had signed several multi-billion-dollar deals with foreign oil companies mainly from China, France and Russia, according to the US Energy Department.

Russia, which is owed billions of dollars by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has a strong interest in Iraqi oil development.

Boucher also said the United States would leave it up to Iraq to decide whether it still wanted to be a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Iraq was one of the five founding members of Opec, which was established in Baghdad in 1960.

Boucher said the United States was not “neutral” in its position on whether Iraq should stay in Opec, but he said it will be in the Iraqi hands to decide.—Reuters