The United Nations expects to pay more than US million to shut down Iraq's oil-for-food program, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.

　　The council voted last month to lift all economic sanctions against Iraq and to eliminate the program by November 21.

　　The program allowed the former Iraqi regime to sell unlimited quantities of oil, provided most of the money went to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. The program was adopted in 1996 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

　　The "best estimate for all known and projected costs" associated with phasing out the program over six months is US million, Annan said in a report issued on Monday.

　　At the end of the six-month period, the US-led coalition will take charge of all responsibilities from the oil-for-food program.

　　Iraq exported 3.4 billion barrels of oil under the program, generating some billion in revenue, according to the United Nations. Nearly billion in humanitarian supplies were delivered to Iraq under the program.

　　The rest of the proceeds from oil sales went toward war reparations, weapons inspections and the oil-for-food program's administrative costs.

　　Annan suspended the program in March, on the eve of the US-led military campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.

　　UN humanitarian workers returned to Iraq in late April, and distribution of the program's regular monthly food ration resumed on June 1.

　　The resolution phasing out the oil-for-food program also established an Iraq Development Fund at Iraq's central bank. The fund was opened with an initial deposit of US billion transferred from the oil-for-food program's account.

　　In addition to about US billion committed to supplies already in the pipeline, the program's account holds in escrow about US.8 billion in uncommitted funds, with some US million set aside to cover the administrative costs of running the program.

　　Meantime, in Iraq, a US soldier on patrol was killed in Baghdad by a sniper's single gunshot on Monday night. The sniper escaped as the soldier collapsed on the ground. The American soldier was dead upon arrival at a first aid post.

　　Iraqi officials in a nearby town were targeted by drive-by shootings likely designed to intimidate them against cooperating with the Americans.

　　The violence came as US military officials announced that American troops had detained 371 people in three days of sweeps in Baghdad and northern Iraq meant to "isolate and defeat remaining pockets of resistance that are seeking to delay the transition to a peaceful and stable Iraq."

　　About 50 US soldiers have died since major operations were declared on May 1, either by hostile fire or operational accidents.