Unofficial translation from Russian

People in Russia regard with great concern the campaign of groundless attacks being whipped up against the United Nations' leadership, who are being accused of abuses of the former UN humanitarian program in Iraq.

We have already noted on more than one occasion that we see no weighty grounds for any such attacks. To examine suspicions on that score the United Nations has set up a special panel with a specific mandate, and it is necessary to wait for the results of its work.

It should not be forgotten that in its time, thanks to the humanitarian program launched by the UN in Iraq, the population of that country of many millions was successfully saved from hunger and epidemics. The UN operation actually helped improve the socioeconomic situation in Iraq, which was under long-standing sanctions. Now the country has again turned out to be teetering on the edge of a humanitarian disaster. It is enough to refer to UNICEF data made public that since the UN Oil-for-Food Program was wrapped up the number of undernourished children in Iraq has doubled.

Of course, if weighty proofs of program abuses do appear, they should be duly examined, just as the remaining problems in such areas of the Iraqi dossier as clarifying the issues of Iraq's potential for the development of weapons of mass destruction and of the fate of the missing Kuwaitis and archives and property of Kuwait.

But the process of the investigation of the wound-up humanitarian program should not become an aim in itself and obscure the hugely acute problems Iraq is facing now. There is an urgent need to stabilize the situation there via a genuinely pan-Iraqi dialogue and national reconciliation, to establish elementary security conditions and conditions for truly open and fair elections and to ensure at least the same level of supply of food, medicines and other essential goods for the people that there was in Iraq during the period of operation of the UN humanitarian program.

December 3, 2004