The Iraqi oil pipe- line and Syria

The London- based Arabic language al-Zamaan issued on Saturday said that a UN team will start a visit to Syria, but no date was fixed for this visit in order to check the Iraqi oil pipe line which crosses the Syrian territories and to check the amounts of oil Iraq pumps into this pipe.

The paper added that Baghdad has repeatedly denied exporting the Iraqi oil through Syria, but oil sources kept talking about oil exporting deals worth millions of USD. And well-informed sources linked between the visit of the UN team to Syria to the promise which the US secretary of state Colin Powell said during his meeting in Damascus in February with President Bashar al-Assad over putting the Iraqi oil pipeline under international inspection.

The paper quoted Syrian sources as saying that Damascus does not consider the Iraqi oil deals as a help to Baghdad to smuggle oil to the outside, rather views this process in the framework of bilateral relations and trade and economic co-operation relations between the two states as well as an attempt to alleviate the sufferings of the Iraqi people because of the continued UN sanctions.

The paper indicated that according to the Syrian sources that oil pipeline pumps between 100- 150,000 barrels every day part of which is used by the Syrian side for daily consumption purposes and the remaining part is exported abroad.