UN receives food distribution plan from Iraq

The UN on Wednesday announced that it had received on Tuesday a plan for distributing foodstuffs for the next six months in the course of the oil-for-food agreement with Iraq.

AFP quoted the office of the UN in charge of the Iraqi program as saying that the plan includes some 2,000 pages and will be studied within the coming days. He added that oil experts are now in Iraq to study means of investing US $300 million approved by the UN Security Council to maintain and repair the Iraq oil industry infrastructure.

UN estimates say that Iraq was able to only export US $3.9 billion in the fifth phase of the program, which ended in May, out of the set plan of US $5.2 billion, due to the bad conditions of the infrastructure and the recession in crude oil prices.

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has to approve the Iraqi plan so it can be put into actual implementation.