The humanitarian situation in Iraq, including that relating to children, and the challenges of implementing the established United Nations humanitarian programmes in that country, remain of deep concern to the Government.
These concerns have been actively pursued by the Government, including more recently, at high level meetings which I have had with the Russian Foreign Minister in Moscow on 21 February, the French Foreign Minister in Paris on 23 February, the new US Secretary of State in Washington on 28 February and the German Foreign Minister in Berlin on 8 March. The Government consistently advocates the rapid delivery of essential supplies under the oil for food programme. It continues to raise, within the UN and EU, the urgent need to improve the conditions of children and other vulnerable sectors of the population in Iraq.
The oil for food programme was established by a memorandum of agreement between the UN and the Government of Iraq in 1996 to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people in the context of the UN economic sanctions regime introduced in 1990. This agreement came into force five years after the UN had initially offered to allow the Government of Iraq to sell oil to meet the basic needs of its people. Administered by the United Nations Office of the Iraq Programme, the oil for food programme is the existing co-ordinating mechanism for meeting the humanitarian needs of the people of Iraq.