UN poised for Iraq food scheme

UN poised for Iraq food scheme

UN aid worker checks stacks of Iraqi food aid in Jordan

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has said a United Nations humanitarian aid programme for Iraq could be reactivated within 24 hours.

The UN Security Council has agreed a draft resolution to revive the oil-for-food scheme, a lifeline for the Iraqi people for the past six years.

The programme, which allowed Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil to buy food, medicine and humanitarian supplies, was suspended on the eve of the war with Iraq.

IRAQ FACTS

A statistical view of daily life in Iraq

However some Security Council members, notably Syria but also France, Russia and China, have expressed concern that the draft resolution might appear to sanction the war, which they regard as illegal.

US-UK support

Mr Blair is believed to be keen to bind the UN, which has not endorsed the war against Iraq, into aid and later reconstruction efforts in the country.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Blair said the "UN door [would be] open again" if the council backed the programme.

OIL-FOR-FOOD

Programme aims to give Iraqis 2,470 calories per day

570,000 tonnes of food a month

44,000 distribution agents

Five entry points

$1.27bn for current 6 months

The UN's Secretary General Kofi Annan has however stressed that, under the Geneva Conventions, the powers exercising authority on the ground in Iraq - namely the US and UK - are primarily responsible for the well-being of the civilian population.

At the US presidential Camp David retreat on Thursday, Mr Blair and US President George W Bush appealed to the UN to restart the oil-for-food programme.

Mr Bush, however, said the issue must not be "politicised" - a reference to concerns within the Security Council that the scheme must not be seen as legitimising the war.

Safety concerns

Germany's UN envoy Gunter Pleuger, head of the council's Iraq sanctions committee, said the scheme could be restarted "as soon as the Secretary General decides it is safe to send people back into the region".

Mr Annan ordered all UN staff out of Iraq one day before the US-led coalition began bombing Baghdad.

There is currently $2.5bn earmarked for food in the oil-for-food account.

Under the draft resolution, Mr Annan would be put in charge of the delivery of humanitarian relief supplies to Iraqis for 45 days.

The programme, which has previously been administered by Iraq and the UN, had provided food for 60 per cent of Iraq's 22 million people.