The UN Security Council on Wednesday gave Iraq the green light to develop a civilian nuclear programme, ending 19-year-old restrictions aimed at preventing the country from developing atomic weapons. In two other resolutions, the 15-nation council also wound up the controversial oil-for-food program for Iraq and set June 30, 2011, to end all immunities protecting Baghdad from claims related to the period when former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in power.
"The adoption of these important resolutions marks the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime and restriction on Iraq's sovereignty, independence and recovery," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told the council. "Our people will rejoice for having turned a chapter on the aggressive, belligerent and defiant behaviour of the previous regime towards international law and legitimacy," he said. After its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was hit with a series of UN measures that banned imports of chemicals and nuclear technology that could be used in its covert atomic, chemical and biological weapons programs. Those restrictions were in place for two decades.
Baghdad will keep paying 5 percent of its oil revenues as war reparations, most of it to Kuwait, despite Iraq's calls for a renegotiations of those payments so it can use more of its oil money for needed development projects. Iraq still owes Kuwait nearly $22 billion in reparations, Western diplomats said. In a statement read out by US Vice President Joe Biden, the council welcomed improvements in Iraq's relations with its neighbour Kuwait and encouraged it to "quickly fulfil its remaining obligations under ... resolutions pertaining to the situation between Iraq and Kuwait." The council agreed to the statement unanimously.
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