Iraq 'plans Palestine oil tax ploy'

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Iraq 'plans Palestine oil tax ploy'

Special report: Iraq Special report: the petrol war

Sunday December 3, 2000

Saddam Hussein is preparing a dramatic intervention in the Middle East crisis, Arab Gulf sources believe. He is expected to offer to resume supplies of Iraqi oil - cut off last Thursday - in exchange for a 'tax' of around 25 cents a barrel for the Palestinians, writes Brian Whitaker . If the ploy succeeds, it will be seen by millions of Arabs and Muslims as a political master-stroke, setting the seal on Saddam's rehabilitation despite the brutality of his regime.

The 25 cent levy on Iraqi oil - worth $500,000 a day - would almost certainly provoke public pressure on Opec, the Organisation of Oil Exporting Countries, to put a similar levy on all its members' oil. This in turn would give the Palestinians around $2.8 billion in a full year.

All this fresh money, added to the $1bn funds established by the Arab League last October, would outstrip the $3bn a year given to Israel by the United States.

The United Nations Sanctions Committee wants all Iraqi oil revenue to be be channelled through the Oil for Food programme. This provides food and other approved products to the Iraqi people, and compensates victims of the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,406107,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), December 02, 2000


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