Iraq has urged the United Nations to intervene to help end "attacks" by the US Navy on vessels in Gulf waters transporting goods for Iraq, the official INA news agency reported Friday, cited by AFP.
"Baghdad urges the United Nations to intervene with the US government to stop acts of unjustified provocations against vessels transporting goods for Iraq," Iraq's UN representative Mohammad Al Duri was quoted as saying in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"These attacks and acts of piracy committed by the US Navy in the Gulf are aimed at stopping the arrival in Iraq of humanitarian goods and to further the suffering of the Iraqi people," Duri said.
Iraq "reserves the right to claim damages following attacks," he warned in the letter carried by INA.
The Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet said the Georgios, flying the Honduran flag, was carrying 1,894 tons of smuggled Iraq crude when it was intercepted by the US Navy more than a month ago, but refused to speculate on why it sank on Sunday.
The ship's unidentified owners charged that the US Navy sank the vessel, which they said was loaded with 2,100 tons of crude when it was intercepted off Bahrain, following an argument between the captain of the ship and the US forces.
A US-led multinational fleet, the maritime interception force (MIF), patrols Gulf waters to enforce a UN embargo slapped on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990.
Ships are often intercepted leaving Iraq to guard against smuggling of oil products outside the confines of the UN oil-for-food program which authorizes Baghdad to export crude in return for humanitarian supplies.
Under the UN sanctions, oil exports from Iraq are illegal unless the revenue from sales is channeled through the UN's oil-for-food program. Revenue from smuggled oil, on the other hand, goes directly to the Baghdad regime - "to purchase their luxuries and not to the Iraqi people," as the British Foreign Office puts it, cited by The Guardian in March this year – Albawaba.com
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