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By Jonathan Wright
REUTERS
www.reuters.com
May 15, 2003

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SOFIA (Reuters) - The United States will consider proposals that the United Nations initially suspend sanctions against Iraq before finally lifting them, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday.

The idea is one of several compromises that could enable the United States to win support for a U.N. Security Council resolution which would enable the United States and its allies to start exporting and selling Iraqi oil.

The United States says it wants a resolution next week because Iraqi storage facilities are filling up with oil for export, holding up the parallel process of refining petrol and cooking gas for the Iraqi people.

But the initial proposal submitted by the United States, Britain and Spain had run into opposition from France and Russia, partly because it gives the United States the right to sell Iraqi oil with minimal international supervision.

Powell, speaking at a joint news conference in the Bulgarian capital Sofia with Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, said some U.N. Security Council members had suggested an initial suspension of the sanctions, which have been in place since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

A suspension would give members of the council an opportunity to review the way the United States has managed Iraq's oil resources at the end of a certain period.

Powell added: "We think it is much cleaner to lift the sanctions but as part of the discussion and negotiation process we will look at the idea of initially suspending sanctions."

"We are anxious to be able to move the oil in order to generate revenue. Lifting sanctions, we believe, is the best way to do that but we will see what the argument is for suspending sanctions and see if it makes any sense," he added.

"But our preference is to lift and that's why we put in the resolution that way," he said.

Powell discussed the resolution in Moscow on Wednesday and in Sofia on Thursday. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and Bulgaria an elected member.

But after his talks in Moscow, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia wanted to see a "legal basis for broad international involvement" in post-war Iraq. Powell said there were some outstanding issues, including the question of whether U.N. weapons inspectors should go back to Iraq.

A senior State Department official said Powell had heard questions from the Russians on the role of the United Nations, how to handle weapons of mass destruction, contracts, the oil-for-food program and what to do with Iraq's money.

"There is still a lot of discussion and debate about the elements of a resolution. We are at the beginning stages," added the U.S. official, who asked not to be named.

A top Russian official said on Thursday the fate of the draft U.N. resolution to lift sanctions against Iraq depended on resolving the issue of Iraqi debts and contracts agreed with the former government of Saddam Hussein.

"Very heated discussions on this topic are going on in New York...this question will be resolved. The fate of the resolution depends upon it," Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov told reporters in Moscow.

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