Iraqi diplomat slams U.N. for misuse of funds

NEW YORK — Charging that the United Nations is treating various Iraqi accounts as a source of “easy money,” Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie said his country is trying to recover money deposited in various U.N.-administered accounts and reduce payments to others.

In Geneva, Iraqi diplomats are trying to win support for a plan to reduce their payments to a fund that administers reparations for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

And in New York, the Iraqis are protesting the use of their hard currency to pay for an investigation into mismanagement of the oil-for-food program — which was itself financed with billions in oil exports.

Baghdad is also getting impatient with the $1 million a month spent on the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, the office that was created to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found, either by international inspectors or U.S. occupation forces.

“Iraq now is in great need for every dollar to rebuild itself,” said Mr. Sumaidaie. “It was ruined systematically over decades of misrule. We need it more than anybody else.”

He said that he has been trying for months to get a full accounting of how much Iraqi money is in various accounts, but still hasn’t anything definitive.

Aging infrastructure and sabotage have slashed Iraqi oil exports from prewar levels. However, the steep $60-a-barrel prices partially compensate for small exports.

Before the March 2003 invasion, Iraq exported 2.1 million barrels of oil a day.

Five percent of all oil sales is diverted to the U.N. Compensation Commission, which has just finished consideration of more than 2.6 million claims against the former regime for loss, damages and death.

Of those claims, $52.5 billion has been approved, but only $19 billion has been paid out so far.

At this rate, it will take years — or even decades — to make good on those awards, acknowledges Compensation Commission spokesman Joe Sills, unless Iraq reaches bilateral agreements with its neighbors.

The money, the government says, would be better spent on reconstruction and investment, rather than weapons inspectors and reparations for Kuwaiti business owners.

But changing the rules won’t be easy.

There are scores of Security Council resolutions pertaining to the collection and use of Iraq’s oil proceeds, and only the council can alter those mandates.

The council readily agreed — over Baghdad’s protests — to spend $30 million last year to fund a U.N.-authorized inquiry into possible fraud and mismanagement of the oil-for-food program.

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