U.N. Says Iraq Will Join Talks on Sanctions Deadlock

Iraq has confirmed that it will attend U.N. talks this month on the decade-old Persian Gulf War sanctions, despite last week’s airstrikes near Baghdad by the United States and Britain, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday.

Annan, speaking to reporters, also said the United States assured him that the air attacks were “not an escalation, not a qualitative difference in their activities in Iraq.”

The United Nations also released a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf demanding that the world organization condemn the bombing as an “act of aggression” and hold the U.S. and Britain fully liable for all damage.

The U.N. Security Council discussed the letter Tuesday but took no action because none was required, according to Said Ben Mustapha of Tunisia, whose country now holds the council’s rotating presidency.

Comprehensive sanctions, including an embargo on oil sales and weapons purchases, were imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990 and then was forced out in 1991 by a U.S.-led international coalition.

Washington and London have long insisted that sanctions could not be lifted until Baghdad complied fully with Gulf War cease-fire resolutions, especially those requiring U.N. oversight of the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The high-level U.N. talks to be held Monday and Tuesday were arranged in November, when diplomats believed that Baghdad had some proposals for breaking the deadlock on sanctions.

Arms experts have not been in Iraq since the U.S. and Britain conducted a bombing campaign in December 1998 to punish Baghdad for its disputes with U.N. inspectors.