UN Oil-for-Food Chief to Visit IraqThe director of the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq, Benon Sevan, will arrive in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on August 1 for a two-week visit, UN spokesman in Iraq George Somerwill told Xinhua on Tuesday.Seven "makes a regular visit to Iraq every year," Somerwill said, adding that the UN oil-for-food chief will hold talks with Iraqi officials and his senior UN colleagues in Iraq. Sevan, an American Cypriot, last visited Iraq in June 1999 to examine ways to increase Iraq's crude exports under the oil-for- food program, now in its eighth phase. The UN humanitarian program was set up in 1996 with the aim to ease the sufferings the crippling UN sanctions, imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, have on the Iraqi people. The program allows Iraq to export unlimited amount of oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. |
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