Home
Discover Islam
Quran Recitations
Lectures
Fatwa
Articles
Fiqh
E-Books
Women
Boys & Girls 
Ramadan
Fatwa Audios
Month of Mercy
Women
Eed Al- Fitr
Food Recipes
Videos
The UN Security Council on Wednesday ended key international sanctions imposed on Iraq in a move to bring closure to the Saddam Hussein era.
Three council resolutions ended sanctions over weapons of mass destruction and ended the UN oil-for-food program for Iraq.
One resolution passed lifted sanctions imposed in 1991 to stop Iraq building the feared, but never located, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons used to justify the US-led invasion in 2003.
A second resolution formally ended the oil-for-food program which allowed the late Iraqi ruler to use billions of dollars of oil money to buy food and medicine between 1996 and 2003.
A third resolution extended UN protection by six months for hundreds of millions of dollars in the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was set up after the 2003 war to handle oil and other revenues.
The council also voted to return control of Iraq's oil and natural gas revenue to the government on June 30, 2011.
Al Jazeera's Scott Heidler, reporting from the United Nations, said there were still some provisions in place allowing international military intervention in Iraq.
While the votes concentrated on weapons of mass destruction and the oil-for-food program, the meeting was intended by the United States as a symbolic recognition of the political changes in Iraq.
Iraq still pays five per cent of revenues from its oil sales into a fund which pays reparations to Kuwait, which has demanded that Iraq pay another $22bn.
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, said normalization with Kuwait would "top the agenda" of the new Iraqi government.
While recognizing the changes, Ban said that "Iraq remains a challenging environment" which will need political and financial support, particularly after the departure of remaining US troops in 2011.
"You have suffered too much for too long, I pay tribute to your resilience," Ban said in a message to the Iraqi people.
PHOTO CAPTION
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, right, meets with Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010, at the U.N. headquarters.
Agencies
Prayer Times
Prayer times for Doha, Qatar 
