Paris UN meeting called on Iraq sanctions

Officials from the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council will meet in Paris today and tomorrow for more talks on ways to overhaul sanctions against Iraq.

The French Foreign Ministry said yesterday the talks would work on drawing up a list of goods that Iraq would be able to import only with the authorisation of the United Nations sanctions committee.

"It seems to us essential to ensure that the list of those goods which will remain subject to approval from the sanctions committee should be as short as possible," ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told reporters.

Britain and the United States are trying to promote a new system of "smart sanctions" that would ease restrictions on imports of civilian goods while tightening controls on weapons-related imports and oil smuggling to Iraq's neighbours.

France, China and Russia, the other three permanent members of the Security Council, have been sympathetic to Iraq's demand for abolition of the sanctions regime, which has been in place since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Rivasseau said France wanted "a really substantial easing of civilian sanctions" and processes put in place that would avoid the risk of bureaucratic delays to necessary imports.

Iraqi newspapers quoted President Saddam Hussein on Sunday as saying Iraq was set for a new showdown over the U.S.-British proposal, which he called an "enemy plan to break Iraq's national will".

Iraq halted oil sales last Monday in protest against a Security Council resolution extending an oil-for-food programme with the United Nations for one month instead of the usual six.

The 30-day period is intended to give council members time to continue negotiations on the U.S.-British ssmart sanctions plan. The oil-for-food programme, an exemption to stringent sanctions, allows Iraq to buy food and medicines with money from oils sales put into a special UN account.