U.S. Seen Ready to OK Delay on Iraq Sanctions

Seeking to end an impasse, the United States, Britain, France and Russia have reached a tentative agreement to put off for up to six months a United Nations decision on restructuring sanctions against Iraq, a senior Bush administration official said Wednesday.

Iraq’s current oil-for-food program, due to expire June 3, will be temporarily extended, primarily to give Russia a chance to scrutinize a proposed new list of banned items, the official said.

The extension, to be put in the form of a U.N. resolution, will nominally be for six months. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the United States hopes the review can be completed in about a month.

Broad outlines of the agreement were hammered out in a meeting in Budapest, Hungary, over the last two days among Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the foreign ministers of Russia, Britain and France, the official said. China, the fifth veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, was not part of the discussions.

The apparent agreement was principally designed to meet Russian objections to a U.S.-British proposal to allow trade in most civilian goods with Iraq while tightening controls on military imports. Russia is campaigning for an end to the U.N. sanctions.

Powell told reporters traveling with him from a NATO meeting in Budapest that he is optimistic that the issue will soon be resolved.