Letter dated 6 May 2001 from the Permanent Representative of
Iraq to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

On instructions from my Government, I should like to refer to our many letters concerning the payment of the arrears in Iraq’s contributions to the budget of the United Nations. The last such letter was that of 6 August 2000 (S/2000/781), and in it we requested that consideration be given to the possibility of Iraq’s arrears to the Organization being paid from the revenues from Iraqi oil exported under the memorandum of understanding and the oil-for-food programme.

As you know, by paragraph 8 of its resolution 1330 (2000), the Security Council allowed the sum of 15 million dollars drawn from the sub-account of the Iraq account designated for operational and administrative expenses to be used for the payment of the arrears in Iraq’s contributions to the budget of the United Nations. This provision has yet to be applied, despite the fact that there is a sum of some half billion dollars lying dormant in this account. These are purely Iraqi funds, and they have been blocked in this account in an arbitrary manner under the cover of its being a so-called “contingency account”.

I should like to point out in this connection that the United Nations and those of its specialized agencies that operate in Iraq in the framework of the oil-for-food programme obtain major financial resources from the programme, so that it has become the major source of funding of their budgets. This is in addition to the resources derived from the arbitrary figure of 2.2 per cent of the Iraq account that is designated for operational and administrative costs.

Accordingly, it is neither logical nor rational that Iraq should be the major contributor to the budgets of these agencies from its funds designated for humanitarian purposes at a time when its right to use these funds for the payment of its contributions to the United Nations is being denied.

Everyone is well aware that the United States supports any endeavour to prevent Iraq from paying its contributions from its own funds because of its policy of using the mechanisms of the United Nations to impose on Iraq an economic, military, political and media blockade and to commit aggression against the country.

I should be grateful if you would have this letter circulated as a document of the Security Council.

(Signed)
Mohammed A. Al-Douri
Ambassador
Permanent Representative