PRESS RELEASE

On Russia's Initiative to Hold a Session of the UN Security Council Iraq Sanctions Committee

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY

August 16, 2002

Russia has come up with an initiative to hold a special session of the UN Security Council Iraq Sanctions Committee to discuss the critical situation that has evolved in financing the UN humanitarian "oil for food" program for Iraq as a result of the continuing practice of retroactive pricing of the oil exported by Iraq.

The delegation of Russia intends to decisively raise the question of changing the pricing mechanism imposed on the Committee and reverting to the previous, consensus-based procedure for setting the price of oil in advance, as well as of ending the attempts to introduce discriminatory criteria for purchasers of Iraqi oil, which leads to a disruption of the financing of contracts for supply of humanitarian goods to Iraq and is threatening a full-scale crisis of the UN program as a whole.