ARMENIAN SIDE BREACHES CEASE-FIRE WHILE MONITORING
Azerbaijan News Service (ANS)
Sept 20 2005
Holding of the monitoring on the area of the Garahanbeyli village
of Fizuli region at the cease-fire line was planned on 20 September
2005 in accordance with the mandate of the OSCE current chairman
personal envoy. From the Azerbaijani side the monitoring was to be
held by the personal envoy of the OSCE current chairman, the Ambassador
Andzey Kasprshik, his field assistants Andzey Kasprshik,and Olexander
Samarski, as well as the high level official of the Working Group,
the press service of the Defense Ministry told. At the opposite side
of the cease-fire line which is internationally recognized as the
territory of Azerbaijan the monitoring was to be held by the field
assistants of the OSCE current chairman personal envoys Imre Palatinus,
Peter Kea and Harry Eronen, as well as the high level representative
of the Working Group. On 20 September 2005 at 11.53 a.m. during the
start of the monitoring the fire was opened from the left flank of the
units of the Armenian Armed Forces in the direction of the delegation,
which held monitoring on the Azerbaijani side. The field assistant
Vymetal registered the breach of the cease-fire from the Armenian
side and reported to the Ambassador Andjey Kasprshik about it. By
the decision of Kasprshik monitoring was halted.

THE AUTHORITIES OF ARMENIA ARE INTERESTED IN DEVELOPMENT OF STRATEGIC PROGRAMS, ESPECIALLY IN THE AREA OF ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Sept 20 2005
YEREVAN, September 20. /ARKA/. The authorities of Armenia are
interested in development of strategic programs, especially in the area
of economic transformations, as the Councilor of the RA President in
economic matters Vahram Nersisyants stated when reading the message of
the RA President Robert Kocharyan to the participants of “Armenia-2020”
All-Armenian forum. The message states that the presidents welcomes the
initiative of “Armenia -2020” program regarding development o a common
strategy for development of the country, which would be convenient
for calculating the speed of development and working out prospects of
the further progress of Armenia. “We highly appreciate the efforts of
the program “Armenia -2020″, which aim not only at anticipating the
near future but also at analyzing and offering long-term strategic
perspectives, since stable development of Armenia is our priority
goal and we are ready for cooperation”, according to the message.
The All-Armenia Forum “Growth of productiveness and competitiveness:
strategy of stable development of Armenia” was launched in Yerevan.
It’s expected to hold discussions on maintaining stable growth of
economy of Armenia, prospects and capacities of development of separate
sectors of economy. Over 350 representatives of Armenia and Diaspora,
the RA NA Speaker Arthur Baghdasaryan, RA Minister of Foreign Affairs
Vartan Oskanian, Minister of Defense Serge Sargsyan, and Councilor
of the RA President in economic matters Vahram Nersisyants will
participate in the forum. Also, participation of businessmen of
Armenian origin from different countries and world famous companies,
including Alcatel and McKinsey&Company is expected.
Armenia-2020 Program was launched in Feb 2002. Already $2 mln has been
spent of the program. The main goal of the program is to organize
and hold discussions about possible perspectives of a long-term
development of Armenia with the further development of scenarios of
development of the country till 2020. A.H.–0-

RADANOVICH HAILS US CONGRESS PASSING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
Pan Armenian News
20.09.2005 03:40
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Congressman George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) today
praised the House International Relations Committee for passing a
resolution he sponsored reaffirming the United States’ record on the
Armenian Genocide.
The resolution was approved by a vote of 40-7. “The U.S. National
Archives is replete with thousands of pages documenting the
premeditated extermination of the Armenian people,” Congressman
Radanovich said. “As the Armenia Genocide was being committed, the
United States launched an unprecedented diplomatic, political, and
humanitarian struggle to end the carnage and protect the survivors,” he
said. “I appreciate the bipartisan support for this resolution, which
properly acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, reaffirms the proud and
groundbreaking chapter in U.S. history to halt the Genocide, and renews
our commitment to preventing other occurrences of man’s inhumanity
to man.” Congressman Radanovich introduced the legislation, House
Resolution 316, with Congressmen Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Frank Pallone
(D-NJ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA). House Resolution 316 has the support of
140 cosponsors. “On behalf of the Armenian Assembly of America and the
pan-Armenian community, we commend Congressman Radanovich,” said Aram
Hamparian, Executive Director, Armenian National Committee of America.
“Congressman Radanovich has been a tremendously powerful voice for
Armenian Genocide reaffirmation for over 10 years,” he emphasized. As
Hamparian stated, “We look forward to building on the Committee’s
action and to working with all members of Congress to secure a
full floor vote on Armenian Genocide legislation at the earliest
opportunity.”

KAREKIN II: “WE SHALL NURTURE EACH DAY OF FREE ARMENIA, IN THE NAME OF THE UNIFIED AND GLORIOUS FUTURE FOR ALL ARMENIANS”
Noyan Tapan News Agency
Sept 21 2005
ETCHMIADZIN, SEPTEMBER 21, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The
Information Services of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin submitted
to Noyan Tapan the Congratulatory Message of His Holiness Karekin II,
Catholicos of All Armenians, on the occasion of Armenian Independence
Day:
“We extend greetings and blessings from the Mother See of Holy
Etchmiadzin to all our sons and daughters in Armenia, Artsakh and the
Diaspora, congratulating them on the festive occasion of Independence
Day of the Republic of Armenia.
A new page opened in our history on September 21, 1991 – a day blessed
by God, whose great sacred mystery will be celebrated and commemorated
by our succeeding generations.
Our people did not yield to the difficulties and sacrifices of the
liberation struggle for Artsakh, the earthquake and the blockade;
rather with one heart and one will defended the right to live free
without hesitation. We have passed through a difficult yet ascending
pathway on the journey to create our new life and new statehood,
a course which will become broader and brighter through the united
efforts, faith, devotion and love of our people.
We shall nurture each day of free Armenia, for the sake of the
development and prosperity of our Motherland, in the name of the
unified and glorious future for all Armenians.
We offer prayers and wishes to heaven, that the Lord protect the
Republic of Armenia under His Fatherly Right Hand, and keep our people
filled with grace and reinforced with faith, to live and work for
the love and glory of our homeland.
May the grace, love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us
and will all”.

ANDRANIK MARGARIAN: WE SHOULD NOT FORGET THAT OUR YOUNG STATE IS TODAY FACING SERIOUS CHALLENGES
Noyan Tapan News Agency
Sept 21 2005
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 21, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The Armenian
Prime Minister Andranik Margarian sent a message on the occasion of
Independence Day of the Republic of Armenia. The message, which was
provided to NT by the RA Government Information and PR Department,
reads:
“Dear compatriots,
I congratulate you on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day. By
choosing the path of independence on September 21, 14 years ago, our
people realized the dream of its freedomloving ancestors, established
its firm aspiration to lead a free, independent and dignified life
among other civilized countries and nations, fully realizing that first
of all Independence means an awareness of one’s national dignity,
confidence in ones’ own power, a citizen being guided by the idea
of a sovereign state and statehood, and the preservation of national
values and their proper presentation in the universal values system.
The past years have shown that by uniting around the idea of
independence, we can win on a battlefield and overcome various
difficulties and ordeals. While paying homage to the memory of our
heroes who laid down their lives for the cause of independence and
establishing our independent statehood step by step, we should not
forget that our young state is today facing serious challenges, and
we must be unified in order to confront these challenges – to protect
the state from shocks and “saviors”, who value their own pretensions
above all else or have their eyes directed to other states and their
tending to please others has unfortunately resulted in many bitter
lessons throughout our history.
All of us – the authorities, political forces and the public have
some amount of work to do on our way towards democracy and the civil
society. The most important thing is that we have enough will and
potential for it. We have made considerable progress in the economic
field and in the house construction sphere, which represent serious
guarantees for preserving what we have achieved over the last 14
years and for accoplishing our national goals in the future.
I congratulate all of you once again and wish a good festive mood.

SITTING OF BELARUSIAN-ARMENIAN COMMISSION ON TRADE-ECONOMIC COOPERATION TO BE HELD IN NOVEMBER IN YEREVAN
National Legal Internet Portal, Belarus
Sept 21 2005
The development of friendly Belarusian-Armenian ties is based on
good relations between leaders of the two countries, Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Armenia to Belarus Suren
Harutyunyan told in an interview with BelTA on September 21, the day
Armenia celebrates its Independence Day.
Suren Harutyunyan noted that there are all presuppositions for boosting
trade-economic cooperation between the two states. To this end a
sitting of the intergovernmental Belarusian-Armenian commission on
trade-economic cooperation is planned to be held in Yerevan November
this year.
A business forum and an exhibition of Belarusian goods will be attached
to the sitting. The Armenian entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to
get acquainted with the Belarusian economy and find business partners.

How Turkey fails its Kurds
By Jonathan Power International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005
BUCUK TEPE, Turkey This is the edge of tomorrow’s Europe, at least if Turkey
gets its way. A desolate mud-built village, close to the Syrian border,
reduced to rubble by the Turkish Army when it was battling the rebels of the
Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is slowly being repopulated by a brave
few.
The families are understandably nervous. The PKK has recently restarted its
insurgency, breaking a five-year truce, angry with the government’s slow
delivery on its promises to allow Kurdish in the primary schools, full-scale
broadcasting in Kurdish and to invest in economic development. “This
violence is what we don’t want,” says one man, living with his extended
family under nothing more than a homemade canopy.
Five minutes drive from the river Tigris, which farther downstream watered
the first of humankind’s civilizations, we engage in what seems an almost
surreal conversation. On the one hand, the grandfather, who has fathered 12
children, explains how they make a living with their herd of sheep out of
what appears to be stony, barren land without a blade of green grass to be
seen. On the other, he says, although in their hearts they feel Asian they
want to enter the Europe Union. “Europe will give us peace and give us Kurds
our rights,” he says. “And give us food and jobs,” one of his sons adds.
A few kilometers away is another larger, more prosperous, village that
escaped the war unscathed. The villagers grow wheat and lentils, and
although they say the water is of poor quality, every house has a television
and half the men of the village, as they converse with me in a large circle,
show me their cellphones. The refrain is the same, even from the young men
who hover standing at the back: “We don’t want to fight again. We Kurds want
Europe to accept Turkey. We feel deep in ourselves Asian, but now we want to
be European.”
But how can modern Europe swallow all this? The poverty, the ignorance
(girls are rarely educated out here), and now the renewed boiling of war.
This is not the civilization of contemporary Europe, and probably not even
of ancient Mesopotamia. This is life almost, if not quite, at its most
elementary and unsparing.
The Turkish government is desperate to cement on Oct. 3 the agreement to
begin negotiations for entry to the European Union, but as one senior
official told me, Ankara “seems never to miss a chance to shoot itself in
the foot.” This year Turkey has witnessed the police beating up women
demonstrators in Istanbul, the indictment of Turkey’s best-known novelist,
Orhan Pamuk, for writing that the Armenian accusations of Turkish genocide
in the days of the Ottoman Empire need to be looked at openly and, most
important, the bureaucratic go-slow on implementing what was promised to the
Kurds – thus providing the kindling for a renewal of the insurgency.
Some of Turkey’s liberal voices are driven to wonder what is really going on
behind the scenes. Inur Cevik, who was once a prime minister’s senior aide
and now publishes the English-language newspaper The Anatolian, is described
by one senior European ambassador as someone who “is pretty damned true.” He
told me that he is convinced that parts of the army are conniving with the
PKK to restart the fighting in order to derail the Turkish approach to
Europe. But, for all the ineptness of the Turkish government that gives rise
to such conspiracy theories, the likelihood is that these are rogue
elements.
Moreover, apart from the fact that the high command of the Turkish Army is
firmly pro-Europe, as their mentor Ataturk would have expected them to be,
the PKK itself is also split on Europe, with some elements appearing to
realize that an anti-European stance is not popular in this southeastern
corner of Turkey.
Neither, for all its romantic allure, is the PKK’s occasional talk of a
united Kurdistan. Kurds are impressed with the degree of political and
economic autonomy that the Iraqi Kurds have won during the recent
negotiations on the Iraqi constitution, but they are also aware that it is a
precarious autonomy and that the government of that province is still,
despite elections, essentially feudal, dominated by two families.
Most of Turkey’s Kurds want to be European and are neither seriously tempted
by the PKK or a united Kurdistan. But Turkey still doesn’t know how to bring
its Kurds up to the starting line. And in making this grave mistake it is
probably delaying the chances of Turkey of entering the Europe Union as
quickly as it wants to.

U.S. pressures Syria to fall in line on Lebanon, Iraq
USA TODAY
Wednesday, Sep 21, 2005
By Barbara Slavin
The United States is increasing pressure on Syria, using harsher words
and pointed diplomacy to get President Bashar Assad’s government to
stop aiding Iraqi insurgents.

Recently, Bush administration officials met for the second time with a
Syrian opposition leader who favors Assad’s replacement by a
democratic government.
At the United Nations on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
chaired a meeting on shoring up Lebanese democracy that excluded
Syria, long the power broker there, and Emile Lahoud, Lebanon’s
Syrian-backed president.
Last week, President Bush said the United States would work with
allies to further isolate Syria, already subject to U.S. trade and
investment sanctions. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad,
accused Syria of harboring training camps for insurgents and said
U.S. patience was running out.
Several Syria experts say the Bush administration has started to plan
for a Syria without Assad at its helm, but some warn that the
alternatives could be even worse.
“The administration is scouting,” says Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East
expert at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. “There’s
no Chalabi out there,” he adds, referring to Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi
exile leader who promoted the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and is now a
deputy prime minister in Iraq.
Last month, Farid Ghadry, a Syrian-American who heads an opposition
group called the Reform Party of Syria, met for an hour with the head
of the National Security Council’s Middle East section.
Ghadry says he and Michael Scott Doran discussed the “transition from
an autocracy to a democracy and why a transitional parliament is an
important element” of that change. It was his second meeting with U.S.
officials; in March, he went to the State Department to discuss
Syria’s future.
His party claims to have offices in 18 countries, including an
underground office in Syria, and operates a Cyprus-based radio station
that broadcasts into Syria.
U.S. officials began anticipating the fall of Assad when Syrian troops
were forced to withdraw from Lebanon in April after the Feb. 14
assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Katzman
says.
Hariri supporters charge that Syria was behind the murder. A
U.N. investigation has led to the arrest of four pro-Syrian Lebanese
security officials. Investigators led by German Judge Detlev Mehlis
went to Damascus on Tuesday to interview Syrian officials about the
crime.
The meetings with Ghadry and the administration’s decision to grant
visas to two Syrian reformers to attend a May conference in Washington
show the administration is in “the very early stages” of planning for
regime change in Syria, Katzman says.
Appropriations bills for the fiscal year that begins in October
promote democracy in Syria, he says. A House version allocates as much
as $1.5 million; the Senate version does not specify an amount.
U.S. officials want Assad out of power because they don’t believe he
will stop the flow of fighters from Syria to Iraq, says Flynt
Leverett, a former member of the National Security Council in the
Clinton and current Bush administrations.
Administration officials declined repeated requests for comment. In
the New York Post on Thursday, Rice said the U.S. intention was still
to change Syria’s behavior. “But we’ll see whether or not the Syrian
government is smart enough to take that course,” she said.
Monday, she told reporters at the U.N. that “Syria needs to get on the
right side of events” by stopping interference in Lebanon and ending
support for Palestinian militants and Iraqi insurgents.
Syria denies it is helping Iraqi insurgents. The United States is not
patrolling the border, while Syria has stationed 10,000 troops there,
says Buthaina Shabaan, Syria’s minister of expatriates and an adviser
to Assad. Instead of pushing for Assad’s removal, Americans should ask
whether “promoting violence and war is the right way to change
countries and bring freedom and democracy,” she says. “Are they
satisfied with the results in Iraq?”
Several Syria experts say Assad’s removal could pose new problems.
Theodore Kattouf, U.S. ambassador to Syria until September 2003, warns
of a power vacuum, leading to chaos, or a worse leader, such as
Assad’s uncle Rifaat.
Exiled by Assad’s late father, Rifaat Assad has long sought power but
would be an unlikely ally for the Bush administration. In 1982, he led
a brutal crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists in the Syrian city of
Hama. An estimated 20,000 people were killed.
Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-American professor of political science at
George Washington University, says Rifaat Assad is extremely unpopular
in Syria and that the secular opposition is weak. Jouejati calls
Ghadry a “Chalabi mini-me.” The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood
would take advantage of any instability, he says. “The Bush
administration wants regime change but cannot find a viable
alternative.”
Frustration with Assad has been building since the United States
invaded Iraq in March 2003. Edward Djerejian, U.S. ambassador to Syria
under the first Bush administration, met with Assad in January and
urged him to cooperate, just as his father did during the Gulf War in
1991. “He has not made a strategic decision to do so,” says Djerejian,
director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

PRESS RELEASE
Mira Yardemian
Public Relations Director
Haigazian University
Rue Mexique – Kantari
P.O. Box 11-1748
Riad El-Solh 1107 2090
Beirut – Lebanon
Tel: 961-1-353011
Web:
Beirut Lebanon
On Monday the 19th of September, 2005, Haigazian University welcomed
around 200 incoming students who underwent a thorough Orientation Program
during 2 full days.
This Program is a university requirement, designed to help new
students make a smooth transition into all aspects of university life:
academic, communal, spiritual and social.
The campus minister, Rev. Nishan Bakalian warmly welcomed the new
comers, and assured them that all Haigazian University staff and faculty
are there in their service.
President Paul Haidostian shared some of his experiences of
orientation when he first joined Haigazian as a student.
In addition, he introduced the students to the Haigazian culture
which is based on its motto: Truth, Freedom and Service. “The truth is
translated in life through transparency, honesty, faith, openness,
curiosity and humility. In freedom, we discover the virtues of creativity,
independence and responsibility. And in service we find the meaning of
human life. The heights of life and existence can be discovered truly when
we put what we have in the service of others”, explained Haidostian.
The Dean of faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Arda Ekmekji stressed
on the Student Centered Environment at Haigazian University as well as on
the Liberal Arts Education in general, which endow the student with a
rounded education, global vision and wide panorama. She encouraged students
to engage in critical thinking, criticizing, disagreeing and questioning.
In short, she pushed them to be actors instead of spectators.
The Dean of Business Administration and Economics, Dr. Fadi Asrawi
talked about the quality education provided by Haigazian University, and
about the various activities organized by the Business School. He stressed
the importance of combining the theoretical knowledge with the field
experience, an approach followed at Haigazian.
The Student Life Director, Mr. Antranik Dakessian invited the
students to be active members in the numerous clubs at Haigazian. This will
positively channel students’ energy, providing them with social and
interactive skills.
Finally, the Director of the Orientation Program, Dr. Berge Traboulsi
considered the program as a key to University success, as it provides
students with skills of time and life management.
Towards noon time, everyone was gathered in the Mugar Garden around a
lavish buffet lunch.
The two-day Orientation Program successfully prepared the incoming
students for a new educational journey at Haigazian University.

International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
Oil-for-food: Far from a failure
by Benon V. Sevan
After nearly a year and a half and more than $35 million spent, the
Independent Inquiry Committee Into the United Nations Oil-for-Food
Program (IIC), led by the former Federal Reserve chairman Paul
Volcker, has faulted the management of the program, which I ran for
six years. It is easy to apply formal management and audit criteria
after the fact to a massive multibillion-dollar humanitarian program,
but as the recent crisis in New Orleans shows, what is critical when
people are dying is to bring food and medicine to affected
populations as quickly as possible. This we accomplished. There are
many thousands of people alive today because of the oil-for-food
plan.

There is a misconception, reinforced by the familiar echo chamber of
the Murdoch press, The Wall Street Journal, the UN bashers in the
U.S. Congress, and neocon think tanks, that the program was a failure
of epic proportions, riddled with corruption and pliant to Saddam
Hussein’s every manipulation. The reality is that the oil-for-food
program was highly successful in its fundamental mission of
addressing the acute humanitarian crisis caused by sanctions imposed
on Iraq, in channeling all but a very small percentage of Iraqi oil
revenues into food, medicine, and other approved humanitarian
supplies, and in helping to maintain international support for
sanctions, which in turn prevented Iraq from developing weapons of
mass destruction during the course of the program.

Volcker’s ‘public’ and other political constituencies are
nevertheless demanding heads on a platter, and the latest IIC report,
sadly, appears to capitulate to that pressure by unfairly targeting
the Secretariat, including the Office of the Iraq Program (OIP) and
me, for problems that were essentially inherent in the design of the
program and in the inevitable reality of politics among member
states.

The program was created by a series of Security Council resolutions
that carefully defined – and limited – the role of the Secretariat.
In particular, the Office of the Iraq Program did not have
responsibility for monitoring, policing or investigating sanctions
violations. That role was specifically reserved to the Security
Council; its so-called 661 Committee, which monitored the overall
sanctions regime and oil-for-food; and member states. The IIC knows
or should know this. Yet the IIC insists repeatedly on blaming the
OIP for functions, such as investigating sanctions violations, that
lay beyond its mandate.

The IIC also faults the secretary general, the deputy secretary
general and me for failing to provide information regarding Iraqi
demands for illicit kickbacks and surcharges to the Security Council
through formal rather than informal channels. But in setting forth
its charges, the IIC seems to confuse the decision not to convey
information through official channels with a decision not to convey
the information at all. On no occasion did OIP or I personally
withhold material information from the Security Council members, the
secretary general and his deputy. OIP informed the 661 Committee not
only on surcharges but also on at least 70 occasions of contracts
reflecting suspicious pricing (and hence possible kickbacks), yet the
committee declined in every instance to act. Similarly, I informed
the U.S. government, effectively the policeman for sanctions
violations in the Gulf, of maritime smuggling on a massive scale that
was occurring, to no avail.

It is now known that the United States and other member states
purposefully allowed this smuggling to occur, in addition to the
massive daily shipment of oil by land routes, putting billions of
dollars directly into Saddam’s pockets in violation of sanctions in
order to support Iraq’s trading partners, Turkey and Jordan, which
are also U.S. allies. It smacks of hypocrisy to criticize OIP for a
political compromise made to help the economies of American allies.

The IIC also engages in a lot of second-guessing as to whether I
delegated too much authority to senior managers on the ground in Iraq
instead of to bureaucrats in New York. I disagree with these
criticisms. Micromanagement from 8,000 miles away would have been a
recipe for disaster in an immense and complex program like
oil-for-food.

It is important to consider what those, including Security Council
members, who were observing our performance in real time had to say
about its management. Among others, in October 2003, Ambassador John
Negroponte of the United States, the president of the Security
Council (and now President George W. Bush’s director of national
intelligence), speaking in his national capacity, commended “the
outstanding work” that we had “done both in New York and in the
region over the years in the implementation of the program, as well
as the “exceptional professionalism and thoroughness” of OIP staff
“despite the obstacles and challenges that they face daily.”

The program was not perfect, nor was it ever expected to be. It was
implemented within the context of a very rigorous sanctions regime,
carried out in six-month extensions (and hence always on the verge of
closing down), beset by conflicting political pressures, situated in
a country in crisis and hindered by fundamental design problems –
most notably, the Security Council’s decision to allow Saddam to
select his own contractors for oil exports and imports of
humanitarian supplies, as well as to implement the program in the 15
governorates in the center and south of Iraq, which all but
guaranteed political manipulation.

At the same time, my colleagues and I were faced with the grave
responsibility of providing basic life necessities to a highly
vulnerable population. We took that responsibility both seriously and
personally. As the recent tragedy in New Orleans demonstrated, there
is a cost to overly bureaucratizing a crisis relief effort that the
IIC chooses to ignore. The people of Iraq desperately needed
humanitarian relief in real time. Thanks to the oil-for-food program,
they received it. That is the essential purpose of a humanitarian
program, and we accomplished that purpose, in nearly impossible
circumstances. Despite its shortcomings, the program made a major
difference in the lives of the Iraqi people.

(Benon V. Sevan is former director of the oil-for-food program for
Iraq.)