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Dear Dirk, Per, Philippa, Colin, Tim and List The original claim that provoked this discussion was from the Iraqi Minister of Transport and Communications, who said (in the article Dirk posted): "the contracts [on hold at the 661 committee] reached to 252 that worth $821 million". It's slightly unclear what he is claiming: cumulative totals since 1991 (ie including those that have now been released) or the current amount on hold? From the use of the present tense in the remainder of the article, I presume the latter. Also, from the summation of different sectors that the Minister presents, we can assume that he is only talking about holds in the transport & communication sector. I've put up on the CASI site, the Office of the Iraq Program's sector-by-sector analysis of holds, as of 22 October 2001. It's at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/undocs/status011022.pdf Comparing the two claims:- Iraqi Minister : 252 holds worth $821m OIP (row 2) : 99 holds $286m There's four possibilities: either the minister is discussing cumulative totals of holds, the majority of which have now been released; or he has a broader definition of what "communications and transport" involves than the OIP's "communications and transportation"; or I've misinterpreted what the table purports to show; or the minister is exaggerating considerably. I'd appreciate any clarifications to the above points. Regards Glen Rangwala Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RQ UK Tel: 44 (0)7930 627944 Fax: 44 (0)7092 330826 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk CASI's website - www.casi.org.uk - includes an archive of all postings.