UN prepares urgent plan to meet starvation threat

Proposals to ensure that post-war Iraq has adequate food and medicine supplies were tabled by the UN yesterday, as it attempted to revive its role and recover from the humiliating failure to achieve agreement in the Security Council on the use of military force. Members of the Security Council met to consider proposals crafted by Kofi Annan, the secretary general, to reactivate the UN's oil-for-food programme, under which Baghdad could use funds from its oil exports to pay for food and humanitarian imports.

Ambassadors were also expected to look at a similar proposal submitted earlier this week by the British and American governments. There were signs that the Anglo-American plan would be cold-shouldered by those delegations that fought hardest to avert war, notably Russia and France.

"We would be discussing the proposals from the secretary general," Sergei Lavrov, the Russian ambassador, pointedly said before the meeting, the first serious Council debate on Iraq since the diplomatic acrimony leading up to the war. "It is for him and not for anybody else to give these proposals."

The oil-for-food programme was established by the UN in 1995 to alleviate the plight of the Iraqi population. For the past few years, Baghdad has been allowed to export unlimited volumes of oil. The revenue was then placed in a UN account while the Iraqi government signed contracts for the supply of food and medicines. But the programme was suspended last Monday as war became imminent. Officials say resuming the programme is urgent because about 60 per cent of the Iraqi population were dependent on it for their food needs.

Restarting the oil-for-food system may prove to be the first stage of re-inserting the UN into the long-term process of rebuilding Iraq once war is over. Mr Annan also expects his organisation to have a significant role in administering Iraq after the last shots are fired.

His model is the UN Assistance Mission established in Afghanistan after the war, which helped the country to set up an interim administration and proceed to elections.

Achieving agreement on the precise extent of UN involvement may be problematic, with Washington showing signs of distaste for too large a role for the UN.

But on Thursday Tony Blair said a priority would be to define as quickly as possible what part the UN would play in getting an administration running in the country.

Mr Annan has stressed, however, that in the short term it will be up to the aggressors to shelter and feed the Iraqis, in other words the United States and Britain. His resolution on oil-for-food states that the "primary responsibility for ensuring that the Iraqi population is provided with adequate medicine, health supplies [and] foodstuffs ... rests with the authority exercising effective control in Iraq".