Iraq Seeks Oil Revenue for PalestiniansIraq on Wednesday asked the permission of the United Nations to set aside US$880 million from its oil revenue to aid the Palestinians.In a letter to the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Said Al-Sahaf said the Revolution Command Council and the National Command of the Arab Baath Socialist Party, the two supreme constitutional and political organs in Iraq, decided at a joint meeting on December 9, 2000 to allocate 1 billion euro from its oil export proceeds over a one-year period to aid the Palestinians. Part of the 880 million dollars will be allocated to the families of martyrs, to those injured during the fight of the Palestinian people against the Zionist and colonialist occupiers, Al-Sahaf said. The remainder will be used to purchase food, medicine and other essentials for the struggling Palestinian people on the same basis, the foreign minister said. Al-Sahaf urged a quick and favorable response from the Security Council so that Iraq may urgently take the necessary measures to address the needs of the Palestinian people. The oil-for-food program, which began in late 1996, was directed to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people caused by the stringent U.N. sanctions. The United Nations imposed the sanctions against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Under the Security Council resolution establishing the oil-for- food program, 66 percent of oil earning goes to funding the country's humanitarian needs and 30 percent is directed to the Compensation Commission which pays claims arising from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The remainder will be used to pay the costs of the U.N. monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and U. N. operational costs. |
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