Global Policy Forum

By Evelyn Leopold

The United Nations intends to focus on the return of weapons inspectors in talks with Iraq on Wednesday but Baghdad wants a broad agenda that includes U.S. threats to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Diplomats expect Iraq to make positive statements on the U.N. arms experts but not give an unconditional "yes" or "no" reply on their return before the talks end on Friday.

The meetings are the second round this year between delegations led by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. Baghdad postponed a mid-April session saying the world should keep its focus on violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The arms inspectors first went into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, spending seven years checking into weapons of mass destruction. They left shortly before the United States and Britain bombed Iraq in December 1998, meant to punish Baghdad for not cooperating with the arms experts.

Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Aldouri, said Baghdad wanted to raise all pending issues: the U.S.-British imposed no-flight zone, American threats against Baghdad and U.N. sanctions imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

"We have to start with a fuller program of work, such as the no-fly zone, the American threat on Iraq and of course the lifting of the sanctions," Aldouri told Reuters. "It will be a very wide spectrum of discussions. We cannot focus on only one issue," he said.

President Bush has made no secret of his intention to move against Saddam at some point, publicly branding Iraq part of "an axis of evil," together with North Korea and Iran. All three nations, he says, could form a deadly alliance with terrorists by sharing dangerous weapons.

After the last talks on March 7, Sabri sent 20 questions to Annan on a variety of political subjects but the U.N. Security Council could not agree on answers. U.S. and British officials said only questions on arms inspections should be discussed. "The inspectors are not the only and the pivotal issue as portrayed by the U.S. administration and other parties," Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said in Baghdad.

The talks, which begin at noon Wednesday, continue on Thursday among experts but without Annan, who will be attending meetings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Washington with U.S., Russian and European officials. He will return on Friday for the last round of discussions. Annan will be joined by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who came to the March meeting, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, attending for the first time.

COUNCIL WEIGHS VOTE ON SANCTIONS REVISION

While the Iraqi delegation is in New York, the Security Council may adopt new regulations on sanctions. These would allow the freer flow of civilian supplies to Iraq but include a "goods review list" of items with possible military use that need to be approved by council members.

Russia and the United States have approved the cumbersome list but other nations raised questions about the more than $5 billion worth of goods Iraq has ordered that the United States has blocked. U.S. officials said they were assuring council members many of the goods would be released if they were not on the list and suppliers had filled out forms properly.

Currently, all items but food and medicine are subject to a separate review by council members, any one of whom can block a contract. The Security Council had wanted to adopt the resolution as soon as possible to allow U.N. staff to cope with new procedures. The vote is due before May 29. The new regulations are part of the oil-for-food program, which is renewed every six months. The program allows Iraq to sell oil and use the money for food, medicine and a host of other goods to ease the impact of sanctions on the population.

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