Iraq needs vaccines, crop planes—U.N. official

AFP, Wednesday 9 January 2002, 3:34 AM

BAGHDAD, Jan 7 (Reuters)—The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Monday Iraq urgently needed vaccines to combat livestock diseases and spare parts for crop-dusting aircraft, the official Iraqi News Agency said.

Iraq is in need of new crop-dusting planes or the provision of spare parts for the three helicopters Iraq currently has, the agency quoted Amir Khalil, FAO's representative in Iraq, as saying.

Khalil said Iraq had had 27 helicopters before 1990, the year it invaded Kuwait, provoking crippling economic sanctions by the United Nations and a U.S.-led war in 1991.

He said the number of supply contracts blocked by sanctions had reached 231 by the end of 2001, with a total value of more than $580 million.

Contracts on hold included 24 for livestock, 51 for the irrigation sector and 133 for spare parts and machinery. FAO's office in Baghdad has provided all the necessary information on the nature of the contracts and explained the dire need for them to expedite their approval by the 661 (U.N. sanctions) Committee, Khalil said.

The U.N. committee, comprising representatives of all 15 Security Council members, has to vet all contracts for the supply of goods to Iraq under the oil-for-food deal, which is intended to alleviate the effect of sanctions on the civilian population.

Last May Iraqi helicopters manned by Iraqi pilots sprayed pesticide in Basra province 600 km (375 miles) south of Baghdad and in Nineveh province 450 km (270 miles) north of the capital, both in U.S.-imposed flight exclusion zones, for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War.

Spraying flights in the no-fly zones have been undertaken since 1991 by the Rome-based FAO, which used to supply spare parts for Iraqi helicopters and contracted non-Iraqi pilots.

Aerial spraying operations, which cover an area of around 1.8 billion square metres a year in southern and northern Iraq, take place from March to August on rainfed wheat and barley, date palms and sugar cane.

The pests combated are sunpest, humaira, and dubas that infect date palms, desert locust, corn stem borers that hit cotton, rice weeds and blast and wheat weeds.