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UN to supervise new Iraq-Saudi Arabia border crossing

UN to supervise new Iraq-Saudi Arabia border crossing

The United Nations will supervise a new crossing point on the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia as part of the UN’s oil-for-food scheme, which allows Baghdad to use a portion of its petroleum revenues to purchase humanitarian relief supplies, a UN spokesman announced today.

Having received Baghdad’s consent, the Office of the Iraq Programme “will now proceed with the necessary arrangements to deploy United Nations independent inspection agents at Ar’ar border crossing point between Iraq and Saudi Arabia for the purpose of confirming and authenticating the delivery of supplies to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme,” spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters in New York.

According to Mr. Eckhard, the new arrangement stems from a request from Saudi Arabia dating back to October 2000 to open the border crossing point at Ar’ar. The Government of Iraq had indicated its agreement to the UN earlier this month, but it will take several weeks for the border crossing point to be operational.

The Ar’ar border crossing will be the fifth supervised by the UN based on its agreement with the Iraqi Government. The four other existing border crossing points are Trebil between Iraq and Jordan, Al-Walid between Iraq and Syria, Zakho between Iraq and Turkey, and the port of Umm Qasr in the Persian Gulf.

In another development today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wanted to see a “decisive meeting” result from his talks early next month in Vienna with senior Iraqi officials. “We cannot keep talking forever,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “I would hope that we will be able to yield some results.”

The Secretary-General added that his main aim is to achieve progress on the return of weapons inspectors to the country.