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Iraq Accuses U.N. of Blocking Six Billion Dollars Worth of Contracts
With additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem
BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammad Mehdi Saleh accused the U.N. sanctions committee earlier this week of blocking six billion dollars worth of contracts concluded within the framework of the "oil-for-food" program.
Revenues from Iraqi oil sales reached more than $48 billion under the five-year-old program, whose 11th six-month phase started on December 1, Saleh said, quoted by the weekly
Alif Baa.
Of this amount, only $15 billion worth of food, medicines and other goods had reached Iraq and $18.5 billion dollars had gone to finance U.N. activities in Iraq and pay reparations for victims of the 1991 Gulf War, he said.
Of the balance, $6 billion dollars worth of contracts were still blocked by U.N. sanctions committee 661, and $9 billion dollars worth of contracts "have been held up for a long time and goods [purchased under these contracts] have yet to arrive," Saleh said.
The U.N. Office of the Iraq Program said, however, that it had placed on hold 1,529 contracts for the purchase of various humanitarian supplies and equipment worth $4.37 billion.
There were 146 contracts, worth $273.7 million, in the "inactive holds" category, for which the suppliers had not provided the requested additional technical information in excess of 60 days, the office said.
The "oil-for food" program is designed to allow Iraq to sell crude under U.N. supervision to meet the humanitarian needs of its people, who have been hard hit by the sanctions imposed on the country since Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
However, former U.N. humanitarian coordinators to Iraq, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who both resigned in protest to the program's failure to adequately alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people, have said that the program does not meet its 22-million population's most basic needs and should not be a substitute for lifting the U.N. embargo.
Iraq regularly accuses U.S. and British representatives on the sanctions committee of blocking contracts for imports into Iraq.
UNICEF Baghdad, the U.N.'s children's fund, also reported that Committee 661 has even denied them from receiving medicine to hand out to Iraq's dying children, many of whom are suffering from diseases resulting as a direct effect of the 11-year-long debilitating sanctions.
An IslamOnline correspondent witnessed the plight of Baghdad's Al-Mansour hospital earlier this year, where even the fluid bags designed to hold intravenous medicine and nutrition were unavailable due to a hold put on them by committee 661, according to hospital officials.
In addition, a five-day-old baby girl died upon the reporter's entrance into her room as the hospital was unable to provide her with antibiotics needed to prevent post-operative infection, which hospital officials also said were regularly lacked as a result of being held up in committee.
It is noteworthy to relay evidence of the cycle of effects resulting from the sanctions and the Gulf War, as the baby was born with her intestines formed outside her body, which prompted the emergency surgery.
According to doctors, the birth defect was indicative of the rise in birth defects that have occurred in Iraqi children since the U.S.'s utilization of radioactive depleted uranium during the Gulf War.
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