April 11, 2003
FRANCE MISOVERESTIMATES:
Flow of Oil From Postwar Iraq May Be Blocked by Rifts at U.N. (WSJ, 4/11/2003)Saddam Hussein may have vanished, but United Nations economic sanctions devised to contain him remain in force, creating a diplomatic tangle that could tie up U.S. plans to fund Iraq's reconstruction with its oil revenue.The U.N. sanctions can't be changed legally without the approval of the Security Council....
"The French have been threatening to veto resolutions [on Iraqi reconstruction] before they've even been circulated," one council diplomat said....
[O]il companies ... have to wait for the new diplomatic standoff to be resolved, so someone can be authorized to sell to them....
Unlike the war itself, which the Bush administration initiated without explicit Security Council approval, U.S. diplomats acknowledge they need council assent to lift the embargo. "There is no suggestion whatsoever of going outside of the system," said one U.S. official....
"We are no longer in an era where one or two countries can control the fate of another country," French President Jacques Chirac told a press conference in Paris earlier this week. "Therefore the political, economic, humanitarian and administrative reconstruction of Iraq is a matter for the United Nations alone."
In any negotiation, you have to be prepared to walk away, otherwise you'll get the worst possible terms. We have to be prepared to walk away from the U.N., which means selling Iraqi oil outside the sanctions regimen in the same way that Russia, France, and China sold arms to Iraq outside the sanctions regimen.
Posted by Paul Jaminet at April 11, 2003 8:56 AM
Oil-for-Food expires in June, and it should be allowed to die.
The U.N. can either remove the sanctions that still exist, or the United States can declare unilaterally that those sanctions no longer apply to the lawful successor regime, and move on. International law experts will have lots of fun with it and raise a big ruckus, and in the meantime ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil and BP can get on with things. I imagine the rest of the world will follow.
And if not, too bad! U.S. energy companies have long been at a disadvantage because of unilateral American sanctions (the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act comes to mind). If the U.N. forces us to level the playing field by its obstruction, I can't say I mind all that much.
I suggest going ahead along Kevin's lines and, in
addition, ignoring the international lawyers. I mean,
don't respond to their letters,subpoenas or anything.
Pretend they don't exist and soon enough they won't.
Simply buy all the oil Iraq can produce. Let the French eat their Saddamite deals. And if they won't release the 40 billion USD that belong to the Iraqi people, withold the US contribution to the UN and pay that sum directly to the Iraqi government till the 40 billion $ are compensated.
Posted by: Peter at April 11, 2003 3:37 PMAlso, the United States could simply divert all of the funds it supplies to the United Nations to Iraq.
Posted by: Thom at April 12, 2003 12:24 AM