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Annan to brief SC on new oil-for-food report next week

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other U.N. officials intend to brief the Security Council on March 24 on a new "oil-for-food" report that calls for a doubling in the amount of equipment Iraq can import, the United Nations said.

The report, circulated on Monday and Tuesday to journalists and council members, last week was scheduled to be discussed on Wednesday. But Annan is in Europe this week and the council instead planned a lengthy public meeting on Wednesday on a controversial report on diamond fuel and weapons trafficking by Angola's UNITA rebels.

Annan, in the report, recommended the Security Council double spare parts and other equipment to Baghdad from $600 million to $1.2 billion over a year's period ending this June "to offset permanent damage to oil-bearing structures in Iraq."

The council's sanctions committee on Iraq, headed by Netherlands ambassador Peter van Walsum, will meet Friday to discuss the report and again on March 23 when it will hear representatives from a maritime interception force in the Gulf that checks for smuggled Iraqi oil and other goods.

Iraq has been under sweeping U.N. trade sanctions since its troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The oil-for-food programme is an exception to the embargoes and allows Iraq to sell unlimited amounts of oil to buy food, medicine and other supplies to offset the impact of the sanctions.-Reuters