United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday pledged continued UN help to Iraq's long-suffering people as the world body was closing a 7-year-old oil-for-food program designed to alleviate the sufferings of the Iraq people brought by UN sanctions.  

Speaking at an open meeting of the Security Council on Thursday afternoon, Annan said the UN was closing its oil-for-food program at midnight Friday in line with a relevant Security Council resolution adopted in May this year.

The UN was handing over to the US-led occupation forces, the Coalition Provisional Authority, all the responsibilities, together with the remaining funds and assets, assets ranging from schools to electrical power stations and some US$8.2 billion worth of food, medicines and other essential supplies, Annan said.

"The actual delivery of these items will continue well into next year. But we have already transferred US$3 billion to the Development Fund for Iraq and more unspent money will pass to the Fund after the oil-for-food program closes," he said.

He said, "We take pride in the fact that we have achieved an orderly handover of such a large and expensive program, on time and in spite of the current insecurity in Iraq."

The oil-for-food program, the only humanitarian program ever to have been funded entirely from resources belonging to the nation it was designed to help, was established under a Security Council resolution adopted in April 1995, and implementation of the program started in May 1996. The first Iraqi oil under the program was exported in December 1996 and the first shipments of food arrived in Iraq in March 1997.

Under the program, the UN secretary-general was required to supervise the sale of Iraqi oil, and to monitor the spending of the proceeds on specific goods and services for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

In nearly 7 years of operation, the program delivered food rations sufficient to feed all 27 million Iraqi residents, and as a result, the malnutrition rate among Iraqi children was halved, Annan said.

He also said that there had been no reported cases of polio in Iraq for almost three years, electricity blackouts in Baghdad were reduced under peak summer loads and clean water became more available for personal use, among other things.

(Xinhua News Agency November 21, 2003)