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Iraq's U.N. Oil-For-Food Deal Could Be Renewed
BAGHDAD, June 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.N. oil-for-food program could be renewed for a further six months following Russia's rejection of a U.S.-British proposal to revamp the 11-year sanctions regime imposed on Baghdad, an Iraqi newspaper said Thursday.
A six-month renewal of the humanitarian program "is plausible in current circumstances," said the Babel newspaper, run by President Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday.
On June 1st, the U.N. Security Council agreed to a one-month rollover of the program, while the Council debated the U.S.-British proposal for the implementation of so-called "smart" sanctions, news agencies reported.
The chances of the Security Council adopting the proposal before the July 3rd deadline were "very small, if not zero," Babel said.
"While Russia has not announced it was going to use its right of veto, the content of its last statement warns it might," the paper added.
Russia, on Tuesday, told the Security Council it could not accept the U.S.-backed British draft, and submitted a counter-proposal with a timetable for suspending sanctions, which was also rejected Wednesday by Iraq.
The oil-for-food program, in operation since late 1996, permits the sale of Iraqi oil under the supervision of the U.N. in order to provide humanitarian aid for Iraq's general population.
Meanwhile, Iraq announced Thursday that three Iraqis were killed in air raids by U.S. and British warplanes on Monday and Tuesday in southern Iraq, an unidentified Iraqi military spokesman said.
"Enemy [U.S. and British] planes from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait bombarded civilian and service installations in the province of Basra, killing three citizens," said the spokesman, quoted by the official INA news agency.
Iraqi anti-aircraft missile units hit an aircraft in Monday's attack, the spokesman told the agency. But the Pentagon denied the report.
The spokesman said coalition warplanes "targeted our civil and service installations in the province of Basra," 340 miles south of Baghdad, the agency reported.
He said that U.S. and British warplanes from Turkey over-flew the north of the country before being driven off by anti-aircraft fire.
"The United States and their ally, Great Britain, have thus added a crime to their file of terrorism against the combatant Iraqi people," the spokesman added.
Iraq said last week that twenty-three Iraqis were killed and 11 others injured when U.S. and British warplanes struck a football pitch in Tel Afr, 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of Mosul last Wednesday.
Both Washington and London denied the accusation, claiming that any deaths must have been caused by "misdirected ground fire" by Iraqi forces, according to U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
Iraqis have been under continuous U.S.-British air raids patrolling the northern and southern exclusion zones aimed at enforcing military restrictions imposed on the Iraqi regime after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq does not recognize the zones, saying the zones violate its sovereignty and international law.
With the latest deaths, Iraq asserts that 353 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in raids since 1998.
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