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U.S. And France Clash Over Holds On Child Vaccines For Iraq
UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (News Agencies) - France clashed with the United States in the U.N. Security Council on Thursday over holds placed on applications to import child vaccines under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq.
The executive director of the program, Benon Sevan, told the council that vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, pneumonia, tetanus and hepatitis were in short supply in Iraq.
"These shortages are exposing the Iraqi population to normally preventable infections," he said, quoting from a report by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, published earlier this week.
"The lack of vaccines would mean that the 4.7 million children under the age of five countrywide are at risk," he went on.
The report said the shortages were due to "delays in placing orders for replenishment of health items, irregular deliveries of orders, holds placed on applications, and failure of some items to pass quality-control tests."
But, speaking to reporters later, the acting U.S. representative to the United Nations, James Cunningham, denied that holds on contracts were to blame.
Noting that only two contracts for vaccines were currently on hold, he said: "If there is a problem with the vaccine flowing through the system, it is not something that has been created by the holds."
Asked why such contracts were blocked at all, he replied: "The process for creating and working with vaccines, as I understand it - and I'm not an expert - is very similar to the processes involved in producing biological weapons."
Members of the U.N.'s Iraqi sanctions committee - notably the United States and Britain - have blocked large numbers of contracts, often on the grounds that the requested supplies had a potential military dual use.
The deputy French ambassador, Yves Doutriaux, told the council that, "holds on vaccines are not simply very serious from a moral point of view, they are also incomprehensible."
None of the vaccines mentioned in Annan's report were on the list of dual-use items drawn up by the U.N. arms inspection commission, he said.
Doutriaux pointed out that children needed to be vaccinated against certain diseases when they reached a certain age.
"If that period is allowed to slip by, for instance by placing contracts on hold, children of that age will never be able to be vaccinated," he said.
In remarks prepared for his briefing and distributed to reporters, Sevan quoted Annan's "grave concern over the unacceptably high level of holds placed on applications," which exceeded $3.3 billion at the end of last month.
Sevan noted that holds placed on contracts in the electricity and transport sectors had a direct impact on the distribution of food and other basic supplies in Iraq.
But Sevan noted that some items "such as the kind of computers which are utilized in our offices in New York, are readily available in the markets of Baghdad, or elsewhere in Iraq."
The committee began fast-tracking applications in March last year on instructions from the Security Council, concerned about the large number of contracts placed on hold, usually by Britain and the United States.
Originally applied to food and educational items, medical goods, and agricultural equipment, the fast-track procedures were later extended to encompass water and sanitation supplies and electrical goods.
Sevan appealed to members of the committee "to review further their criteria in placing applications on hold."
But Cunningham said, "The holds are not a core part of the difficulty in the program."
The real problem was "Iraq's under-funding, and foot-dragging," he said.
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