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Strategies & Market Trends : John Pitera's Market Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Pitera who wrote (3914)	5/23/2001 11:52:18 PM
From: stomper	Respond to of 33421

I missed this today. Could be an interesting catalyst with oil hovering around 30/b already (from SOROS on CFZ): Wednesday May 23 4:07 AM ET Iraq Spells Out Threat to Halt Oil Exports By Nadim Ladki BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has spelled out to foreign diplomats in Baghdad its threat to halt oil exports if British-U.S. proposals on a new sanctions regime are enacted, newspapers said on Wednesday. They quoted Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz as telling the diplomatic corps in Baghdad that the United States and Britain were lying in saying that their proposals for a new U.N. sanctions regime were aimed at easing the embargo on Iraq. The proposal was meant to strangle Iraq and harm its neighbors, Aziz was quoted as saying. ``If the Security Council adopts the resolution to renew the memorandum with the proposed American elements and ideas in it, then the government of Iraq will halt the oil-for-food program and not a single barrel of oil will be sold under this program,'' Aziz was quoted as saying. He had already warned on Monday that Iraq would suspend the oil-for-food program if the United States interfered in its renewal when its current six-month phase expires on June 3. Britain distributed to Security Council members on Tuesday a draft resolution proposing a liberalization of the 11-year-old sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The British-U.S. proposals would lift sanctions on trade in civilian goods and seek to stop oil smuggling, calling on Iraq's neighbors to monitor their borders. The draft would ban trade in military materials, including high-powered computers and some telecommunications systems but maintain a U.N. escrow account into which the bulk of Iraq's oil revenues flow. U.S. ``BIG LIE'' ``The U.S. proposal contains a big lie called the easing of sanctions against the Iraqi people,'' Aziz said. ``The main truth behind this proposal is that the American administration is seeking to strangle the Iraqi economy and to infringe upon the sovereignty of Iraq and the sovereignty of its neighbors with economic dealings with it.'' President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) has called the proposals the ``kick of a dying mule'' and more stupid than the original sanctions and said Iraq would reject them. Britain and the United States hope that the 15-member Security Council will vote on the draft by May 31, before the next phase of the oil-for-food program begins on June 4. Aziz, who last week threatened to cut off oil supplies to Jordan and Turkey if they cooperate with the United States, said he hoped Iraq's neighbors would not cooperate with the new proposal ``because it causes them huge losses.'' While most Iraqi oil exports go through the United Nations (news - web sites) programs, industry sources say Baghdad has been smuggling up to 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) to Turkey and Syria and about 100,000 bpd to Jordan. To get all sanctions suspended or lifted, Iraq must cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors to make sure it no longer has programs for building weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to allow the inspectors back since they left in December 1998 before U.S. and British bombing raids. The new plan would not require Iraq to let arms inspections resume before sanctions on consumer goods could be lifted.