The United Nations (UN) Compensation Commission has awarded an additional amount of US $5,406,161 to sixty-one claimants who have suffered financially or otherwise due to Iraq's invasion and subsequent occupation of Kuwait. The money will go to individual claimants for damages above us $100,000 which were filed by 19 governments and one international organisation representing those not in a position to file their claims through their governments. The payments are financed through the "oil-for-food' programme, which allows Iraq to use oil revenues to fund humanitarian relief for the country. Thirty per cent of the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales are used for the Compensation Fund.

The Central African Republic has responded positively to the recommendations by the un secretary-general Kofi Annan concerning the establishment of a peacekeeping operation in the country. "Kofi Annan's recommendations for a peacekeeping operation that would replace the Inter-African Mission to Monitor the implementation of the Bangui Agreements have my full agreement,' president Ange-Felix Patasse wrote in a letter to the president of the Security Council released recently. The Bangui Agreements, signed in January 1997, comprise the framework for achieving national reconciliation in the country.