UN should be ready to hand over Iraq Oil-for-Food scheme, Security Council told

The United Nations remains on schedule to transfer the running of the Iraq Oil-for-Food program on 21 November, the operation's chief told the Security Council yesterday.

Benon V. Sevan, the Office of the Iraq Program's (OIP) Executive Director, told a meeting of the Security Council that the UN is confident it will be able to hand over, on time, the responsibility and the program's remaining assets to the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.

Mr. Sevan said in his briefing that several outstanding matters still have to be resolved with the CPA and the relevant Iraqi authorities. He said the scheduled transfer had been hampered by the current insecurity and reduced UN staff since the UN's headquarters in Baghdad were bombed on 19 August.

He said that the UN has been phasing down its activities in three governorates - Dahuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah - in northern Iraq, where it directly ran the program. It has also been reviewing all contracts made in Iraq's central and southern areas, where the UN's role before the war this year was restricted mainly to monitoring the local implementation of the program.

Since the Oil-for-Food program began in December 1996, about $65 billion of oil has been exported by Iraq, and more than $46 billion of that amount has been spent on program operations. The operation allowed the previous government to sell oil for food and humanitarian supplies and served as the sole source of sustenance for 60 per cent of Iraq's estimated 27 million people. The program covers 24 sectors, including food, agriculture, electricity, water and sanitation, transport, housing and telecommunications.