The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Prakash Shah, returned to Baghdad on Thursday to work on a two-month-long standoff between Iraq and U.N. weapons inspectors, a U.N. official in Baghdad said.
Shah arrived aboard a U.N. flight from Bahrain and landed at Habbaniya airport northwest of Baghdad, he said.
Shah, an Indian diplomat, was appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in March to supervise an agreement Annan had reached with Iraq after a crisis over the inspection of so-called Iraqi presidential sites.
In August, Annan asked Shah to try to persuade Iraqi leaders to reconsider a decision to halt cooperation with the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), entrusted with with dismantling Iraq's missile, chemical and biological weapons, and with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors Iraq's nuclear arms programme. Iraq demanded that UNSCOM be restructured to reduce what it called excessive U.S. influence, and that its headquarters be moved from New York to Geneva or Vienna.
As a result, the U.N. Security Council decided on September 9 to freeze its periodic reviews of trade sanctions, keeping the embargo in force against Baghdad indefinitely.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz last week returned from a two-week visit to the United Nations where he met Annan and Security Council members. But Baghdad's decision not to cooperate with UNSCOM and the IAEA remained in effect.
Iraqi leaders met on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss Aziz's visit to New York and issued statements lashing out at Washington and accusing it of interfering in internal Iraqi affairs.
