Around $34 million is “missing” from a post-Gulf War fund that Iraq maintains to protect the money from foreign claims, its parliamentary speaker said on Monday as authorities scrambled to head off further protests on cutting politicians’ pay and ramping up support for the needy.

“There is missing money, we do not know where it has gone,” Osama al-Nujaifi (pictured) said at a news conference in Baghdad. “The money is around [$34 million] in total.”

“It may have been spent somewhere, but it does not appear in our accounts, so parliament will investigate where this money has gone.”

Nujaifi did not say when or how the discovery had been made regarding the missing money. He said two investigative committees had been formed to track down the cash.

The Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was set up after the 2003 war to handle oil and other revenues, has been protected against claims by a U.N. resolution that expires on June 30.

On December 15, the U.N. Security Council ended key international Chapter VII sanctions imposed on Iraq following now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait in a major move toward bringing closure on the Saddam era.

Among the decisions taken on that day was the closure of the DFI.

(Sources: Al Arabiya, AKnews)

A legal adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on Sunday that the Iraqi government is currently pursuing more than 150 foreign companies accused of corruption in the Oil-for-Food program, according to an AKnews report.

Fadel Mohammed told the agency that the government is determined to bring these companies to justice, adding that there are a number of additional companies currently under investigation.

The Oil-for-Food Program was instituted to relieve the suffering of civilians as the result of the sanctions imposed on Iraq from the UN following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

Over $65 billion worth of Iraqi oil was sold on the world market during the program. About $46 billion of these funds were intended to provide for the humanitarian needs of Iraqi people such as food and medicine in the context of international economic sanctions.

Throughout its existence, the program was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials.

Contracts to sell Iraq humanitarian goods through the Oil-for-Food Program were allegedly given to companies and individuals based on their willingness to kick back a certain percentage of the contract profits to the Iraqi regime.

Companies that sold commodities via the Oil-for-Food Program were said to be overcharging by up to 10%, with part of the overcharged amount being diverted into private bank accounts for Saddam Hussein and other regime officials and the other part being kept by the supplier.

International aid organizations reported that in the course of the program, more than 500,000 Iraqi children died of malnutrition because of the mishandling of funds.

Following the $22m fine imposed on Scottish engineering group Weir (LSE: WEIR) in December for bribery related to the program, it has been annouced that some of this fine will be used to support development programs in Iraq.

(Source: AKnews, Daily Express)

Iraq’s Ambassador to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), Hassan al-Janaby, has stated in Rome on Saturday that the prices of foodstuffs were increasing and all reports are indicating that the world is facing a very embarrasing situation, threatening to unleash a major hunger wave, but he said Iraq was able to satisfy the needs of its citizens.

According to the report from Aswat al-Iraq news agency, al-Janaby said that “[we] must witness the kind of unrest that took place in Tunisia and Algeria, unleashed due to rising prices of foodstuffs, despite fact that those two countries had achieved a considerable economic progress over the past few decades, along with the wave of anger [in] Bolivia.”

Janaby said that Iraq “had been importing more than 3 million tons of wheat per annum, and the crops storage for this year does not cause any anxiety,” pointing out that rationing the supply of the main materials had helped to keep anxiey away.”

“Iraq, with the steep rise in crude oil prices, will be able to satisfy the needs of its citizens”, he said.

(Source: Aswat al-Iraq)

UNOPS, the United Nations agency assisting UN organizations, international financial institutions, governments and non-governmental organizations, in the areas of ‘peacebuilding’, humanitarian and development operations, has issued a tender to conduct a survey of micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses in Iraq.

Proposals must be received by UNOPS on or before 30 December 2010, at 10.00am Amman, Jordan time.

Please click here to download details of the contract.

The United States hopes the U.N. Security Council will lift restrictions on the import of nuclear technology to Iraq, even though Baghdad has not ratified a U.N. agreement on tough atomic inspections, according to a report from Reuters.

At a meeting on Wednesday to be chaired by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the 15-nation Security Council is expected to remove Iraq’s Chapter VII status, adopt resolutions ending the controversial U.N. oil-for-food program, and extend for six months immunities protecting Iraq from claims related to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Those immunities will expire at the end of June 2011, a senior U.S. official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Baghdad will keep paying 5 percent of its oil revenues as war reparations, most of it to Kuwait, despite Iraq’s calls for a renegotiation of those payments so it can use more of its oil money for needed development projects, Western diplomats said.

Iraq still owes Kuwait nearly $22 billion in reparations.

Expected Council Action
The US (Council president in December) has scheduled a high profile meeting of the Council on Iraq on 15 December. US Vice President Joseph Biden is expected to chair the meeting. It was unclear at time of writing at what level other Council members would participate.

It seems that the rationale for this high-level event is to mark in a distinctive way the recent positive political progress in Iraq and in particular the completion of the complex interparty negotiations on government formation. Several Iraq issues were previously scheduled on the calendar for the Council in the month of December, and the US has taken the opportunity to consolidate discussion of some of these issues and to focus Council attention on Iraq and move forward with the termination of some of the Saddam era Chapter VII obligations imposed on Iraq.

Several decisions are possible from the high-level meeting, including a presidential statement on Iraq’s political progress and possibly as many as three resolutions removing some of the Chapter VII restrictions imposed on Iraq. It is unclear whether the Council meeting will also address residual issues such as the still unimplemented obligations of Iraq to Kuwait.

Background
Council members will have before them in December the Secretary-General’s regular four-monthly report on Iraq. In addition a report from Gennady Tarasov, the high-level coordinator on Kuwaiti missing persons and property, is due for discussion in December.

Also the mandate for the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) and related immunities expires at the end of the year.

It seems that negotiations have begun on draft resolutions which would:

The United Nations Security Council will hold a high-level event on 15 December on the subject of Iraq, which will be chaired by United States Vice President Joe Biden, and attended by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the US permanent representative to the United Nations announced today.

The event will be “an important opportunity for the international community to recognize the very real progress that Iraq has made both in terms of government formation, as well as the significant steps that have been taken to terminate its Chapter VII obligation,” Susan Rice the US Permanent Representative to the UN and the President of the Council for the month of December told reporters at UN Headquarters.

Iraqi leaders last month reached an agreement on the formation of a new Government after months of deadlock that followed the parliamentary elections in March.

Under the power-sharing deal for a new government, President Jalal Talabani was re-elected by the parliament, while Nouri al-Maliki retained his position as Prime Minister.

The outgoing Iraqi government announced on Friday that the demarcation of borders on the Shatt al-Arab will begin at the beginning of November under the supervision of the United Nations (UN), according to AKnews.

The Shatt al-Arab is where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet and flow into the Persian Gulf.

Ahmed al-Shihani, foreign affairs advisor to prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the agency that the government formed a technical committee composed of both the interior and foreign affairs ministries, Basra provincial council and the advisory body of the council of ministers to demarcate the border after coordinating with Iran on the issue.

The process is to be conducted according to international procedures and supervised by the UN, and the Iranian side reportedly welcomes this.

With a length of 204 km and a downstream width of over 2km, the Shatt al-Arab is an important link to the Gulf for Iraq, which has few ports deep enough to transport international freight.

Iran has repeatedly requested shared sovereignty over the waters of the channel which Iraq inherited from conventions drafted during Ottoman rule.

(Source: AKnews)