The Iraqi authorities Thursday invited the chief U.N. weapons inspector to Baghdad, hinting that inspections could be renewed after nearly four years. Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan saying the government would like chief inspector Hans Blix and U.N. weapons experts to come to Baghdad "at the earliest agreed upon time" for technical discussions.
Annan has been trying to persuade the Iraqis to allow U.N. inspectors to return but three rounds of talks since March have failed to make any headway. At the end of the last round in Vienna on July 5 which Blix attended, Annan and Sabri agreed that technical talks would continue.
According to AP, the letter from Sabri to Annan, dated Thursday, for the first time mentions the return of inspectors.
Sabri said his government wants the talks between Blix and Iraqi experts to review the remaining questions about Iraq's weapons programs and decide on measures to resolve them "when the inspection regime returns to Iraq."
The Iraqi minister said the meeting would follow-up on Annan's suggestion in August 1998 "to conduct a comprehensive review ... and assess the degree of Iraq's implementation of its obligations." "We believe that this review will be an important step towards the appropriate legal and technical assessment and treatment of the issues of disarmament and to establish a solid base for the next stage of monitoring and inspection activities...," he said.
Russia welcomed Iraq's move, saying on Friday it was an important step towards solving the Iraqi question peacefully.
"Moscow considers Iraq's proposal to be an important step towards solving the present problems through diplomatic and political means in line with the existing U.N. Security Council resolutions," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.(Albawaba.com)
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