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Expert: UN contributing to Saddam's war chest

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Saturday, September 14, 2002

TEL AVIV Ñ Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has access to as much as $3 billion a year to maintain and develop an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, despite UN sanctions imposed in the early 1990s.

The funds come from the smuggling of oil and surcharges on oil sales under UN auspices.

Amatzia Baram, a leading expert on Iraq and a consultant to several governments, said Saddam has sufficient funds to ensure his WMD arsenal, Middle East Newsline reported. Baram, a professor at Haifa University, said Saddam has obtained funding from the smuggling of Iraqi oil through Jordan, Turkey and Syria.

Saddam has acquired around $1 billion from the sale of smuggled oil, Baram said. Additional revenues are obtained through Iraq's surcharge on oil sold through United Nations auspices.



All told, Baram said, this amounts to between $2.5 billion and $3 billion per year for Saddam's coffers. The Israeli expert said the Iraqi president does not have to use any of this money for the needs of his nation.

"This is a tremendous amount of money," Baram said. "Saddam doesn't have to invest one penny in Iraq. All this comes from the cash register in the UN."

Baram said the UN oil-for-food program essentially manages the import of all humanitarian aid for Iraq. The UN said 1,135 humanitarian supply contracts, worth about $2.1 billion, cannot be processed because of a shortfall in Iraqi revenue. The UN has already approved the contracts.

"Almost all the sectors of the program continue to be affected by this shortfall in funds to some degree," a UN statement said.

Baram said Saddam has exploited the shortfall in funds for humanitarian programs to conduct starvation policies in Shi'ite areas in the south. He said the area of Amara sustains the worst conditions, with hunger and a collapsing infrastructure.

Saddam's current revenues are far less than what he earned on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war. Baram said that at the time Saddam had at least $10 billion in revenues.

"What Saddam doesn't have is enough money needed to bribe Russians to sell him nuclear weapons or material," Baram said. "He also doesn't have enough money to buy 700 tanks or 100 aircraft."

Baram said Saddam has struck deals with Iraq's neighbors for the smuggling of oil, military spare parts and WMD components. He said Syria obtains 20 percent of its $5 billion in hard currency from the smuggling of Iraqi oil.

"The Syrians use the Iraqi oil for their domestic needs and sell their own oil on the foreign market," Baram said. "This way, they can tell the United States that they aren't violating UN sanctions."



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