Iraq: UN-organized donor conference to be held in Madrid on 24 October

The Spanish Government is set to host a United Nations-organized donor conference on 24 October in Madrid to seek billions of dollars to finance Iraq's reconstruction, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) announced today.

A preparatory meeting is to take place in Brussels on 3 September. Work on the needs assessment, which will form the basis for the conference, has almost been completed in consultation with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Consultations with the Iraqi people, including the Governing Council, are to be completed before the conference takes place.

The conference was decided on by a wide-ranging international meeting of 52 countries as well as UN agencies convened by UNDP in June in New York, including for the first time the United States-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, with just 13 weeks left until the closure of the UN Iraq Programme on 21 November, almost half the goods and supplies in the Oil-for-Food pipeline have been prioritized for delivery, as required under Security Council resolution 1483, which lifted sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Under the humanitarian programme, the sanctions-bound government of Saddam Hussein was allowed to sell oil in exchange for relief supplies, the sole source of sustenance for 60 per cent of Iraq's estimated 27 million people.

Consultations between the CPA, Iraqi experts and the UN have so far resulted in the prioritization of 2,422 contracts valued at more than $4.45 billion, including $606.7 million worth of food items.

Other sectors covered by prioritizations so far include oil industry spare parts and supplies ($1 billion), electricity ($844.5 million), agriculture ($530.4 million), water and sanitation ($481.4 million), medicine and health ($271.2 million), and transport and telecommunications ($212.1 million).