Russia proposes holding special meeting on sanctions in respect to Iraq

Russia proposed to hold a special meeting of the Committee of the UNSecurity Council in charge of the sanctions in respect to Iraq to discuss acritical situation with financing the Iraqi humanitarian program Oil forFood, which resulted from the ongoing practice of the backdated approval ofprices for oil exported by Iraq. As the Information and Press Department ofthe Russian Foreign Ministry reported, the Russian delegation is planningto raise a question about changing the procedure of price-fixing forcedupon the Committee and coming back to a former consensus-based procedure ofadvance approval of oil prices, as well as stopping the attempts tointroduce discriminating criteria for the purchasers of Iraqi oil, whichleads to short-circuiting humanitarian product supply contracts and poses adanger of a large-scale crisis of the UN humanitarian program as a whole. .