A UN technical team is expected in Baghdad next week for talks on how to manage 600 million euros ($564 million) allocated to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry, a western diplomatic source said Wednesday.
The source, asking not to be named, said the six-member team was to arrive on February 20.
Oil Minister Amer Rashid said last month that his ministry would inform the UN mission on "projects to finance locally so as to favor free management of funds allocated for the development of our oil industry."
The UN Security Council agreed in December to release up to 600 million euros of Iraq's oil income in cash to train and pay maintenance workers in the country's dilapidated oil industry.
The council asked Annan to ensure the money was not diverted by the Baghdad government for other uses.
The move would allow President Saddam Hussein's government to manage for the first time a small portion of its oil revenues from a tightly-controlled UN escrow account in New York.
Among the projects to be proposed by Rashid are maintenance work on the oil pipelines linking Iraq to Turkey and Syria as well as the construction of an Iraqi-Jordanian pipeline.
The only current legal outlets for Iraqi oil exports, which are supervised under UN sanctions in force since Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, are the Gulf port of Mina al-Bakr and the Turkish port of Ceyhan.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse 2001.
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
