RUSSIA'S SLAVNEFT TO PARTICIPATE IN IRAQI OIL PROJECT








VIENNA, March 9, 2001 /Borislav Pechnikov, RIA Novosti Correspondent/ -- Russian oil major Slavneft will participate in a project to exploit Iraq's Sabba oil fields, sources in the General Secretariat of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries, or OPEC, revealed.


	The contract between Slavneft and Iraq's Oil Industry Ministry will be signed within a month or a month and a half, OPEC sources say.


	The Russian party will have to apply to the UN Sanctions Committee on the implementation of the project, as Iraq is still under embargo enacted following the Gulf War of 1991.


	OPEC analysts evaluate that UN would now favor mitigating the sanctions against Iraq. They contend that the report to the UN Security Council authored by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is proof of that tendency. The report called for the sanctions against Iraq to be "depoliticized" and for the Iraqi people's deplorable situation to be addressed.


	OPEC analysts note that Russia's Zarubezhneft oil company last week got permission to carry out drilling in 45 oil wells in northern Iraq so that Iraq can scale up raw petroleum production.