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| Iraq |
| Iraq oil-for-food program nears end |
| 2003-10-29 |
| EFL: With the U.N.’s oil-for-food humanitarian program set to end on Nov. 21, Security Council members have expressed concern about the fate of contracts and deliveries. Especially contracts, I’ll wager. Benon Sevan, who runs the program, told the council Tuesday that his office will continue ’’a smooth hand over’’ of remaining activities to the U.S.-led coalition. But he said its wrap-up work has been hampered by a cutback in the U.N.’s international staff after two bombings at the world body’s headquarters in Baghdad. The program allowed the former Iraqi regime to sell unlimited quantities of oil, provided most of the money went to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. And we know how well that worked. It was adopted to help ordinary Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Since the program began in December 1996, Sevan said, about $65 billion worth of oil was exported, more than $46 billion was allocated to the oil-for-food operation, and more than $30 billion worth of goods were delivered to Iraq. Er, even my rusty high school math tells me those figures don’t seem to match up. Secretary-General Kofi Annan suspended the program in March on the eve of the U.S.-led military campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Security Council voted on May 22 to lift sanctions and to eliminate the program by Nov. 21. Before the war, the program was providing food for 90 percent of Iraq’s population and goods worth some $10 billion were in the delivery pipeline. As of this week, Sevan said, there was still more than $7.56 billion in the pipeline. "How much more, I can’t say" Sevan said he didn’t know how much money would be left in the oil-for-food escrow account when the program ends. I forgot, this is UN bookkeeping. The money is to be transferred to a development fund for Iraq’s reconstruction controlled by the United States and Britain as occupying powers. Be sure to count the money twice. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte urged Annan to transfer at least $1 billion from the oil-for-food account to the reconstruction effort. I’m sure he’ll get right on it. Sevan told the council that in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, where the United Nations ran the program, he still planned to transfer over $3.5 billion worth of completed and ongoing projects to the coalition, including $1.5 billion worth of assets. In central and southern Iraq, the United Nations has determined that 3,154 approved and funded contracts worth $6.36 billion had been classified ’’to have relative utility’’ after the war, he said. So far, 1,653 contracts, just over 52 percent of the total, have been renegotiated to deal with post-war changes deleted the weapons, did they? but U.N. agencies assured him the rest would be completed by a Nov. 3 deadline. He criticized the United States for not arranging to confirm the arrival of goods at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, despite agreeing on a method for doing so a month ago. Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Gunter Pleuger, who heads the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against Iraq, called for Sevan’s office to publish a list of contracts that won’t be processed, and the criteria used to determine that they were not essential. France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere echoed the call for publication of a list and a reason for those not deemed essential. Are you really sure you want that list? The council’s resolution adopted in May setting the timetable for ending the program said action on contracts determined to be ’’of questionable utility’’ would be delayed until Iraq has an internationally recognized government that can determine ’’whether such contracts shall be fulfilled.’’ |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 This must be the left's "New Math"..... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2003-10-29 5:19:13 PM |