Iraq recovery pledge

May 10 2003

By The Evening Chronicle

The coalition countries' proposals to run Iraq for up to a year and control its potentially vast oil revenues is not a blueprint for creaming off funds to pay for the war, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has pledged. He also insisted the plans, tabled in New York last night, were not designed to shut the United Nations out of post-war Iraq. "Under clear mandatory paragraphs all revenues, every single dollar of the revenues, has to be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people, set out very clearly in the Iraqi Assistance Fund," said Mr Straw. NThree American soldiers were killed and a fourth injured when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed after snagging on a wire during the rescue of an Iraqi child wounded in an explosion near Samarra.