§ Dr. StarkeyTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what assessment he has made of whether the Governments of(a) Iran, (b) Turkey and (c) Jordan have acted to stop the sale in breach of UN sanctions of Iraqi oil through their territories; [120041]
(2) if he will make a statement on his Department's assessment of the volume of oil sold by Iraq in violation of UN sanctions (a) during 1999 and (b) since the start of the current year; [120039]
(3) what assessment he has made of which countries Iraqi oil is being smuggled through in breach of UN sanctions. [120040]
§ Mr. HainWe remain concerned at the large amount of Iraqi oil being smuggled through the Gulf and across Iraq's land borders in breach of UN sanctions. That oil should be funding food, medicine and other humanitarian relief for the Iraqi people through the UN programme, not going into the pockets of the regime and middlemen. We therefore regularly stress the need to crack down on sanctions-busting in contacts inside and outside the region, most recently with Turkey, Iran and the UAE. We ourselves remain committed to the Multinational Interception Force in the Gulf. I welcome Iran's recent action against a number of vessels containing smuggled Iraqi oil. We want Turkey to do more: last year we proposed that the trade across its borders be brought into the UN humanitarian programme. The Jordan/Iraq oil/trade protocol, which is acknowledged by the UN in recognition of the importance to Jordan of trade with Iraq, allows Jordan to import Iraqi oil at half the market price in exchange for Jordanian civilian goods. Excluding oil sold under this Jordanian protocol, we estimate that in 1999 Iraq sold approximately 3.2 million metric tonnes of oil in breach of sanctions; for this year we estimate the figure to be approximately 2.2 million metric tonnes.