Four ships of Australian wheat rejected in Iraq

Lead: Australian officials said Thursday that Iraq refused to accept four shipments of Australian wheat, saying it was contaminated Less than three weeks ago, the official Iraqi news agency reported that the Iraqi government had decided to cut by half the amount of wheat imported from Australia in retaliation for Australian Prime Minister John Howard's comments in support of US sanctions against Iraq A spokesman for the Australian wheat board (AWB), which is responsible for the overseas sale of Australian food, said four ships with a total of 130000 tons of wheat had been asked to stop unloading, and two other ships were parked near Oman to watch the situation He said an independent investigation committee will examine the wheat this weekend He didn't give out details about the pollutants In a July report, the Iraqi news agency quoted the Iraqi trade minister as saying that Iraq would cut by half the amount of wheat imported by Australia and consider completely suspending import trade with Australia Because Australia is in a hostile position to support US sanctions against Iraq After the report was released, Australia's foreign minister said that Iraq had not reached any official agreement with Australia on the contents of the report On Thursday, Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile did not comment on Iraq's rejection Australia has long been working with the United States to urge Iraq to implement the relevant Security Council agreements, allow international observers to verify whether it has lethal weapons, and lift economic sanctions only on the premise of compliance In recent years, Australia exports about 2 million tons of wheat to Iraq every year as part of the oil for food program to ease the impact of United Nations economic sanctions on Iraqi civilians Iraq is allowed to sell oil under the supervision of the United Nations and use the proceeds for the procurement of humanitarian supplies (author:) share to feed Weibo share to: