Iraq Says US-British Draft Unacceptable

Reiterating Iraq's rejection of the U.S.-British draft to renew Iraqi sanctions, a ranking Iraqi diplomat said Wednesday that the draft is nothing related to humanitarianism and is totally unacceptable.

"For Iraq, this is a very bad draft, nothing positive, nothing in relation with the humanitarian situation in Iraq," Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammed Al-Douri said in an interview with Xinhua.

"That is a new sanction regime they would like to impose on Iraq because the current one is collapsing, not completely but partially," Al-Douri said, stressing that it means a failure of the U.S. policy on deterring Iraq.

He noted that as the U.S-British draft is totally unacceptable, Iraq will reject it even if the Security Council adopted it as a resolution.

"Iraqi people will never accept this kind of colonialism regime and we will do whatever in our best, with the help of our friends, to protect our sovereignty," he said.

Commenting on reports that Iraq is decreasing its activities in cooperation with U.N. oil-for-food program, the ambassador said: " It is simply not true."

"There are certain delays," Al-Douri told Xinhua, "when you have a huge amount of contracts on hold by the sanction committee, you can hardly raise the needed money. That's clearly a great difficulty for Iraq to comply with the (oil-for-food) program."

According to a latest report by the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program, the value of contracts placed on hold by the U.N. totaled 3.67 billion U.S. dollars, covering 1,696 contracts or 17.4 percent of the value of all contracts circulated in the U.N. Sanction Committee.

"But nowadays, we have increased our oil exports and we are coming to a normal level," he added.

Britain, backed by the United States, offered on May 21 a draft resolution which proposes a lift of U.N. controls of Iraq's civilian imports, but keeps restrictions on its concept of military-related materials. Indicating intentions to block the U.S. -British proposal, Russia on the following day offered its own version of a draft resolution aimed at bringing a six-month extension to the existing oil-for-food humanitarian program.

As an exemption to the current sanctions against Iraq, the U.N. oil-for-food program allows the country to export oil to buy humanitarian supplies. It is the main source of humanitarian relief for the Iraqi people.

The volume of Iraqi oil exports since the beginning of the oil- for-food program in December 1996 now stands at over 2.47 billion barrels, for an estimated revenue of some 47.8 billion U.S. dollars at current prices.

With the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolution 1330 on December 5, 2000, about 72 percent of oil revenues fund the humanitarian program in Iraq, 25 percent is directed to the Compensation Committee. The remainder goes to cover the costs of U. N. operations in the country.






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