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U.N.: More Must Be Done to Improve Health, Well-Being of Iraqis UNITED NATIONS (Nov. 17) XINHUA - Benon Sevan, executive director of the U.N. Office of Iraq Program, said Wednesday that much more must be accomplished if the oil-for-food program to realize its potential to improve the health and well-being of the Iraqi people. Briefing the United Nations Security Council on the implementation of the U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq, Sevan said the program began to be implemented three years ago and the humanitarian situation in Iraq has improved considerably in those three years. Responsibility for implementing the program effectively is shared between the Security Council and its sanctions committee, the government of Iraq, the U.N. Secretariat and agencies, funds and programs of the United Nations systems as well as the suppliers and their respective governments, Sevan said. "There have been a welcome improvement in the arrival of contracts for targeted nutrition supplies, and for food basket items such as pulses and full cream milk that were previously in short supply. However, we are concerned that we have seen relatively few applications in Phase VI for health, oil spares, water and sanitation, education and infrastructure," he said. As on November 15, the total value of applications placed on hold amounted to 1.042 billion U.S. dollars compared with approved applications worth 8.770 billion dollars, since the start of the program, the U.N. official said. To date, there are around 73 million dollars worth of contracts on hold from phases IV to VI in the agriculture sector, and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that some of these holds have resulted in significant reductions in the use of land for grain crops and the loss of as much as 20,000 tons of wheat production, he said. In the electricity sector to date, of the 746.8 million of applications submitted to the sanctions committee under phases IV, V and VI, 377.7 million or 51 percent remain on hold, Sevan said. According to the United Nations Development Program, if all contracts on hold were to be released, the government of Iraq would, in theory, be able to add 1,900 megawatts of the new or rehabilitated power generation capacity and prevent the loss of approximately 800 megawatts from national grid, Sevan said. With approximately 28 million dollars worth of maintenance equipment on hold, the Iraqi authorities will not be able to slow down system deterioration and, unless other resources are identified, this will contribute to an increased number of forced outages, increased failures in power plants, thus shortening the lifetime of existing generating units and their auxiliaries, Sevan said. Sevan said the Office of the Iraq Program remains fully committed to assisting the sanctions committee and all others concerned in expediting a review of the holds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Please do not send emails with attached files to the list *** Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html ***