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Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Annan said there still is time for the United Nations to get involved because the process was in its early stages. The latest U.S.-led meeting of Iraqi leaders was held Monday.

The U.N. role in Iraq, however, continues to increase on the humanitarian front with more food and aid entering the country and the U.N. Educational, Scientific Cultural Organization sending a mission of eight high-level experts to the country.

The team was to make a preliminary assessment of the state of Iraqi heritage and identify immediate actions that can be taken following the looting of museums after President Saddam Hussein's ouster.

UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura made the announcement in a message to a London meeting of international experts to save Iraqi museums and cultural property.

Back at U.N. headquarters in New York, Annan said the process of determining an Iraqi government was at an early phase.

"As we move down the line, I hope there will be an understanding which would allow the United Nations to play an effective role in the process," he said, promising to met with members of the Security Council later in the week, and adding that he hoped there would be "progress in the not-too-distant future" on clarifying the U.N. role in Iraq as well as on the oil-for-food program.

Proposals to Lift Sanctions

The 15-member panel has before it verbal proposals to lift sanctions in Iraq, by the United States, which is not keen on seeing the United Nations in a vital role, and to suspend sanctions, by France, which is. Russia has informally presented the council a "non-paper" calling for U.N. weapons inspectors to verify Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction and have Annan oversee continuation of the oil-for-food program. Washington doesn't like Moscow's proposal, either.

The World Food Program told an Amman, Jordan, humanitarian briefing that a fifth relief corridor opened with a 22-truck convoy entering into southern Iraq from Kuwait, carrying 880 metric tons of wheat flour -- enough to provide 100,000 people with their flour rations for a whole month. The load was to be delivered to Nasiriyah.

A WFP assessment of the situation over the weekend had shown that household stocks were unlikely to last beyond the first week of May. The U.N. agency has been running almost daily convoys from Jordan, Turkey and Syria. Northern Iraq was reported back to the pre-war food security levels, while daily convoys were rolling into Mosul as of last week.

The U.N. Children's Fund, or UNICEF, reported that in communities where water service was cut completely as a result of the war, it trucked in millions of gallons of clean water and set up community water stations at hospitals and health centers.

An average of 20 water tankers organized by UNICEF cross into Iraq from Kuwait every day. Positive results have been seen in a decline of diarrhea cases in some health centers, the agency said.

The World Health Organization was sending three large trucks, loaded with tons of supplies, from Amman to Baghdad, including 40 emergency health kits, each of which serves 10,000 people for three months. The WHO said the delivery would help serve the urgent health needs of 400, 000 Iraqi people until the end of July.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, the Iraq Program reported the value of priority goods and supplies that can be shipped to Iraq from the oil-for-food program by the new June 3 deadline ordered by the Security Council was estimated at $548.6 million this week.

The increased value of shippable items from last week's total of $455 million was directly related to the extension of time granted to suppliers under the council's latest resolution, officials said.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
United Nations
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