HL Iraq relief extended 6 months; But UN offer to allow oil shipments to buy aid not accepted by Baghdad
Credit: JOURNAL NEWS SERVICES
Notes: See related photo A2, "THATCHER HONORED"
DD 11/25/91
SO THE EDMONTON JOURNAL (EDMJ)
Edition: Final
Page: B6
Category: NEWS
Origin: Baghdad
LP --- Iraq relief extended 6 months; But UN offer to allow oil shipments to buy aid not accepted by Baghdad ---
TX Journal News Services Baghdad Iraq and the United Nations agreed Sunday to extend for six months UN relief operations for victims of the Gulf War and its aftermath. But they failed to break a deadlock over Iraqi oil sales to buy food and drugs. The six-month extension to a "memorandum of understanding" between Baghdad and the world organization was announced at a news * conference by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, the UN official in charge of gulf relief efforts. He said there had been no breakthrough in his talks with senior officials on Baghdad"s refusal to accept UN Resolution 706, which would allow Iraq to export oil worth the equivalent of $1.85 billion Cdn to buy urgently needed drugs and food. He said that if the impasse continued, "the ultimate losers will be the Iraqi people." He appealed to Baghdad to be more flexible about the Security Council resolution. "We need funding and for funding I would be grateful if Iraq would * consider exports of oil," Aga Khan said. Iraq says thousands of young and weak are dying because of shortages of food and drugs. "The government of Iraq may be held responsible for failing to take advantage of the window of opportunity - narrow and constraining though it may be - afforded by the arrangements for oil exports and imports of essential needs," he said, adding "in the political sphere, one of the parties to the recent conflict will continue to be blamed." Iraq says Resolution 706, which would entail UN monitoring at every stage of the oil sales and the import and distribution of essentials, is gross interference in its sovereignty. In a crescendo of complaints at home and abroad, it has said the resolution would turn it into a virtual UN protectorate. * Aga Khan appealed to more western states to release about $4.5 billion of Iraqi assets frozen in overseas bank accounts to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait last year. On Saturday, he announced that Iraq had agreed to free Briton Ian Richter after nearly six years of a life sentence for bribery in return for $144 million blocked in Britain. A source said the money will be used to pay for food and other relief materials from British firms. ILLUSTRATION: AP/ An eight-year-old Kurdish orphan girl, who lost her family during a massacre in 1988, tends a stall in a market in Halabja, a town northeast of Baghdad, where she sells tobacco, bars of soap, cigarettes, and boots
@Art: P @Art: AP/ An eight-year-old Kurdish orphan girl, who lost her family during a massacre in 1988, tends a stall in a market in Halabja, a town northeast of Baghdad, where she sells tobacco, bars of soap, cigarettes, and boots
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