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l9 Contracts Under Oil-for-Food Program Suspended: Iraqi Official
A senior Iraqi trade official has said that 19 contracts signed between Iraq and foreign enterprises under the UN-Iraq oil-for-food program were suspended by the United States and Britain.
US and British representatives at the UN Sanctions Commission 661 suspended the contracts that had been signed in line with financial allocations of the oil-for-food deal, the INA news agency quoted the official as saying on Tuesday.
The contracts involve power equipment, trucks, water treatment units, air compressors, diesel generators, digging machines, and medicine and other necessities, according to the official.
The United Nations started the oil-for-food program in 1996, which allows Iraq to sell oil to buy U.N.-monitored food, medicine and other necessities to offset the impact of the decade-old U.N. sanctions on Iraq, imposed after its invasion of neighboring Kuwait in 1990.
On June 1, the U.N. Security Council decided to extend the oil- for-food program to July 3. Three days later, Iraq suspended its oil exports in protest of the one-month extension of the oil-for- food program, a move which Iraq claims was designed to pave the way for the adoption of U.S.- and British-backed "smart sanctions" against it.
Iraq has strongly opposed the new version of the U.N. crippling sanctions on Iraq, which calls for easing Iraqi import of civilian goods and tightening curbs on military-related materials.��
On Monday, the U.N. Security Council decided to indefinitely put off a vote on the new sanctions regime, paving the way for the resumption of Iraq's oil exports.
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