BAGHDAD, June 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A senior Iraqi official said Saturday that Washington's decision to expel an Iraqi diplomat to the United Nations for alleged espionage was a "ridiculous" provocation.

"It's a provocative and ridiculous move," Saad Qassem Hammudi, a high-ranking member of the ruling Baath party, told Agence France-Press (AFP).

The expulsion, announced Friday by the U.S. State Department, was witness to the "hysteria that prevails in Washington and which marks its Iraqi policy," Hammudi said, while Baghdad's official media kept silent on the issue.

Deputy State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said U.S. officials had "informed the Iraqi mission to the United Nations that one of its diplomats was being expelled for engaging in activities that are incompatible with his status as a diplomat." The phrase is diplomatic jargon for espionage.

Reeker declined to identify the diplomat, detail the charges against him or say when he would be required to leave the United States, AFP said.

A second State Department official said the diplomat had been caught by U.S. authorities trying to recruit U.S. citizens to work for him, but it was not clear exactly for what purpose.

Iraqi sources at the U.N. said the diplomat was Abdul Rahman Saad, a first secretary and sixth in rank of the 14 Iraqi diplomats accredited to the United Nations. Saad had been at his post for less than 12 months.

The United States took the decision "after having failed in its attempts to get Iraqi diplomats to betray their country," Hammudi said, accusing Washington of seeking to "provoke problems and formulate baseless accusations against Iraq."

Meanwhile, Iraqi journalists called on United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan Saturday to intervene to put an unconditional and immediate end to the embargo slapped on Baghdad for invading Kuwait in 1990, AFP said.

Annan should "intervene to put an immediate end without preconditions to the embargo that has left more than 1.7 million dead, mainly children," they said in a message delivered to the representative of the U.N. Development Program in Baghdad.

The journalists delivered the message after taking part in a march attended by hundreds of people to mark "press day", which celebrates the publishing of the first Iraqi newspaper, Al-Zawra, 133 years ago.