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Iraq Urges UN to Approve Its Plan to Aid Palestinian Uprising
Iraq has called on the United Nations to approve its plan to provide a financial aid of 1 billion euros (some 930 million US dollars) to support the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported on Saturday.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Ahmed urged him to "exert utmost efforts to get the immediate approval" to allocate 1 billion euors from Iraq's oil proceeds to buy food, medicine and other essential needs for the Palestinian people.
"The Palestinian people's crisis resulting from the daily Zionist (Israeli) aggression needs to be supported by the international community," Ahmed said in the letter.
Ahmed also accused the United States and Britain of blocking the Iraqi aid plan to "inflict more harm on Palestine."
Iraq, though under sweeping U.N. sanctions since 1990, announced on December 9 last year to grant 1 billion euros from Iraq's oil revenue under the U.N. oil-for-food program to support the Palestinian people.
The program, launched in 1996, allows Iraq to sell oil and use part of the revenue to buy food, medicine and other basic needs to offset the impact of the sanctions, imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait.
Iraq has shown vehement support for the Palestinians' anti- Israeli uprising that erupted last September.
Nearly 700 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the nearly 11 months of the bloody clashes between the Palestinian protestors and the Israeli soldiers.
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