U.N. Extends Authority to Buy Food, Medicine for Iraq

The Security Council on Thursday unanimously extended the U.N.’s authority to act in place of the Iraqi government to get emergency food and medicine into the country until June 3.

The U.N.-controlled “oil-for-food” program will expire then, and the council will have to revive or revise it to empower someone to export oil and import goods for the country -- a debate bound to be long and contentious, diplomats say.

But for the moment, the council agrees on the need to get aid to Iraq quickly. After the war started, the Security Council gave Secretary-General Kofi Annan the fading Iraqi regime’s authority to buy humanitarian goods. The measure empowered him for 45 days -- until May 12 -- but U.N. officials said this week that they needed more time to prioritize $10 billion in contracts that had been approved but not yet carried out.

This month, the U.N. identified more than $450 million in humanitarian goods that can be shipped to Iraq before May 12. Extending the deadline would mean an additional $130 million worth of badly needed food can be delivered before the program ends, Benon Sevan, head of the oil-for-food program, told the council Tuesday.

The council also largely agrees that the program, a legacy of the 12-year-old sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, should be phased out, and control of Iraq’s economy returned to its government. The questions that divide the 15-member council are how and when.

France, Russia, Germany and others agree that sanctions should be suspended soon, but they insist that U.N. inspectors must certify that Iraq is free of banned weapons before sanctions can be totally lifted -- a process outlined in earlier resolutions.

The U.S. says that the process could take months or even years, and that it doesn’t need U.N. inspectors duplicating its efforts to find nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

“Our desire and belief is that the sanctions program should be brought to an end as quickly as possible in light of the totally changed circumstances in the country of Iraq,” U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte said after Thursday’s vote. “The Iraqi people should have access to their own resources and dispose of them as they see fit.”

U.S. officials say that, instead of going by past resolutions designed to pressure Saddam Hussein, they should start with a clean slate and will present a new resolution soon to set up a framework for an interim or Iraqi administration to run the country.

An omnibus resolution also would clean up what the U.S. considers outdated institutions, such as U.N. inspectors, and peacekeeping operations on the Kuwaiti border, as well as addressing issues such as Iraq’s responsibility to return Kuwaiti prisoners of war and remains, and to pay war reparations for the 1990 invasion of the emirate.

But mindful that the negotiations for Resolution 1284, the original measure creating those bodies, took nine months to negotiate in 1999, the U.S. may propose a stopgap measure even sooner to get the oil flowing again. Other council members have discussed granting Annan temporary authority to oversee oil contracts in addition to food and medicine.

France, Russia and China, for example, would like to see a multilateral body -- not just the U.S. or a government installed by the allies -- control oil and rebuilding contracts. Before the war, the three countries held about 75% of contracts through the oil-for-food program, U.N. officials said. The U.S. is the largest indirect buyer of Iraqi oil and has some import contracts through foreign subsidiaries, but it sells very few goods to Iraq directly.

“Once sanctions are lifted, does the U.S. as an occupying power have a free hand to import and export whatever they want?” said Shashi Tharoor, the U.N.’s undersecretary-general for information. “The French and the Russians don’t want to give away the one lever they’ve got.”

The U.S. may ask council members to help speed Iraq’s recovery by forgiving the nation’s debts. According to Exotix, a London-based firm involved in debt trading, Iraq’s external debt is $103.4 billion to $129.4 billion, including overdue interest.

The idea is unpopular among council members, who are among Iraq’s largest creditors. Russia and France claim that Iraq owes them about $8 billion each, and Iraq’s debt to Germany is about $4.3 billion. The biggest single debt, about $25 billion, is to Saudi Arabia.

But those countries might find it in their interest to go along, said one diplomat who asked not to be named.

“Is it in the best interest of the Iraqi people to continue contracts that Saddam Hussein’s regime made? I think once we start to examine the contracts -- and the built-in kickbacks -- people might decide that it’s not the best use of Iraqi money right now.”