U.N. OKs Extension of Iraq Aid Program

The U.N. Security Council on Friday approved a stopgap extension of its humanitarian program for Iraq for two weeks, during which it will try to break months of deadlock over a new comprehensive policy on Iraq.

While Britain and the United States said there was now momentum to reach an agreement perhaps within two weeks, Russia and China stressed that major differences remained and insisted that there could be no artificial deadline.

“We are now working very hard on that comprehensive draft resolution, but this is not linkage,” said Shen Guofang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N.

Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, said the negotiations were deadlocked.

The United States has demanded that Iraq fully disarm before U.N. sanctions imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait are suspended--a demand Lavrov called “a nonstarter.”

“In order to find a way out of the Iraqi deadlock, we must find an agreement on the essence of the remaining serious problems. Attempts to establish any kind of artificial timetable are not appropriate,” Lavrov said.

Russia was also angered by a report that said Moscow would soften its position on Iraq if the United States softened its stance on Russia’s military action in Chechnya. Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov called it “pure invention,” and Lavrov accused Washington of leaking the story.

Britain and the United States had hoped to reach a comprehensive agreement by now on a new policy that would include restarting U.N. weapons inspections, offering Baghdad the possibility of suspending U.N. sanctions, and expanding humanitarian relief.

The humanitarian provisions laid out in the agreement would set the terms for renewing the oil-for-food program, which now lets Iraq sell $5.2 billion worth of oil every six months to buy food and medicine.

But the current six-month phase of the oil-for-food program expires today, and the Security Council members still haven’t bridged their differences over what the new Iraq policy should include.

The United States proposed a simple extension for six months, but Russia proposed expanding the program.

The action Friday was taken to avoid a confrontation.