Iraq Slams US, Britain for Blocking Oil ContractsOnly 21 percent of the oil contracts Iraq signed with foreign countries during the past four phases of the United Nations oil-for-food program were approved, due to obstacles placed by the United States and Britain, a senior Iraqi official said on Tuesday.In a statement, Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rashid said that during the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh phases of the UN oil-for-food deal, Iraq signed oil contracts worth 1.4 billion US dollars with foreign countries, but only 300 million dollars worth of contracts were approved by the UN Sanctions Committee. The minister held the US and British delegates at the UN Sanctions Committee "fully responsible" for obstructing approval of the contracts. Iraq has claimed a total of 1,989 contracts Iraq signed with foreign countries during the past seven phases of the UN oil-for- food program were put on hold, and among them nearly half are oil contracts. Baghdad has frequently accused the US and British members at the U.N. Sanctions Committee of blocking vital imports to impede the implementation of the UN oil-for-food program. Since the program was launched in late 1996, the US and Britain have blocked contracts worth over 3 billion dollars for Iraq to buy daily necessities, oil equipment and spare parts, according to UN statistics released in last April. Iraq has been under UN sanctions ever since its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but the UN oil-for-food accord allows Baghdad to export crude in return for UN-supervised imports of food, medicine and humanitarian supplies. Iraq says the decade-old sanctions have claimed lives of over 1.3 million people, causing a humanitarian crisis in the country. |
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