Negroponte said passing the draft "should be accomplished in the next couple of weeks"

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Hours after U.S. President George W. Bush lifted the U.S. sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, his ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, said Thursday, May 8, he would present a draft resolution on busting international sanctions on Iraq to the Security Council on Friday.

The draft, worded in tandem with Britain, the main ally of the United States in its war on Iraq, is expected to propose an immediate end to U.N. sanctions against the oil-rich Arab country, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Negroponte said Washington hopes to get a resolution lifting the Iraq sanctions through the U.N. Security Council within two weeks.

He said it was "desirable to have this resolution passed as soon as possible," adding this "should be accomplished in the next couple of weeks."

A diplomat familiar with the drafting of the text said it would mention a role for a very high-ranking U.N. special coordinator, but said the text was "not that specific" on his responsibilities.

The draft would also propose "a wind-down, rather than an instant shut off" of the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was set in place in December 1996 to cushion Iraqi citizens from the crippling effect of sanctions, the diplomat said.

U.N. Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette, for his part, told the council member states that the lack of security in Iraq was affecting all humanitarian work, notably in Baghdad, where looting continues one month after U.S. forces seized control of the capital.

"The key humanitarian priorities remain security and the urgent reactivation of essential services," Frechette told a closed-door Security Council meeting.

The current six-month phase of the U.N.-brokered program expires on June 3, and the diplomat said "that's a target" for having the resolution adopted.

On Wednesday, May 7, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the U.S. would present a draft resolution to the council this week to lift sanctions as part of efforts to build a new government in Iraq.

Speaking after a 40-minute meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York, Powell said the draft would also contain "a vital role" for the United Nations in post-war reconstruction.

The resolution would be "forward-looking" and would "not fight the battles of the past," he told reporters, alluding to the bitter divisions in the council before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Circulating

Britain, for its part, said the draft resolution was being circulated Thursday among the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

"The text is circulating today. We want sanctions lifted. We believe they were designed to target the Iraqi regime, not put in place to target the Iraqi people," British Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said.

Asked about the content of the resolution, the spokesman said the text would say "the U.N. has a vital role to play" but he gave no further details.

On the reaction of France and Russia, who opposed the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq and wanted U.N. disarmament inspectors to return to the country, the spokesman sufficed to say Moscow and Paris were "seeing the text today."

He said Blair hoped the Security Council could reach agreement and believed there was "a solution which addressed the different positions if people wanted to have it."

Powell tried Wednesday to woo the anti-war camp by saying that "whatever happened in the past is in the past."

"We are not now talking about a matter of war. We're talking about a matter of peace, a matter of hope. We're talking about helping the Iraqi people, and this resolution has that as its singular purpose."  

Russia Reluctant   

"The procedure for lifting the sanctions must be based on UNSC resolutions," said Ivanov

Russia, however, is still reluctant to support the U.S. draft resolution, as a senior U.S. envoy failed Thursday to coax Moscow into backing the lifting of U.N. Iraq sanctions.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kim Holmes presented to the Russians a text of the draft but Russian officials insisted that U.N. inspectors should first declare Iraq free of all weapons of mass destruction.

Emerging from talks with Holmes, Russian Foreign Minister Igore Ivanov insisted that any complete end to the economic blockade imposed in 1990 would have to take place in line with existing U.N. resolutions.

"The procedure for lifting the sanctions must be based on resolutions previously adopted by the U.N. Security Council," he said.

Ivanov’s deputy Yury Fedotov reiterated that a full lifting of the sanctions still required proof that Iraq did "not possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of producing them".

Under past U.N. resolutions, the sanctions imposed on Iraq should only be lifted after it has been established that Baghdad has no weapons of mass destruction.

Holmes, for his part, said Russia and the United States had an "understanding" on the need to rapidly lift sanctions on Iraq but made no mention of Russian opposition to the proposed U.N. draft.

"There is an understanding that something needs to be done quickly to lift the sanctions burdening the Iraqi people and to find what the U.N. role needs to be in Iraq," Holmes told reporters after the talks.

"This was not a negotiating session. The main points of the resolution are the need to lift the sanctions quickly, define the role of the U.N. and how the international community is to contribute to the reconstruction of Iraq," he added.

Moscow and Paris fear an end to sanctions would effectively hand control of Iraq's immense oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia's, to the United States.

German Pragmatism

German official sources, meanwhile, said anti-war Germany would adopt a "pragmatic and constructive" approach to talks in the Security Council on the U.S.-backed draft.

Although Berlin and Washington were sharply divided over the war, they broadly agreed on the need to stabilise the region by reconstructing Iraq, the sources said.

They said the two countries wanted the Security Council to reach a "consensus decision" in order to provide it with "the necessary unity to act".

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's foreign policy advisor Bernd Muetzelburg has just returned from talks with U.S. officials in Washington on Iraq.

His talks also included ways to repair the damage to German-U.S. ties caused by the acrimony over Germany's anti-war stance.