for-food program, have since been shut down, some of the money, collected in the past, is still being used to finance U.N. weapons inspection teams even though inspections were called off just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which currently has an annual budget of about $12 million, has been on hold since then while the Security Council mulls what to do with it. A fixed percentage of oil proceeds is still earmarked to pay off claims of losses due to the Kuwait invasion, as determined by the Geneva-based U.N. Compensation Commission, which is still performing that task. The commission has received claims totaling $350 billion and has approved $51.8 billion in compensation so far.
