Iraq, UN to Meet Again for Talks in April, Iraqi FM Says

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, March 08, 2002

Iraq, UN to Meet Again for Talks in April, Iraqi FM Says

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Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri ended his one-day talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan here Thursday on the possible return of U.N. arms inspectors to Iraq, and the two sides are expected meet again in mid-April.

"We had a constructive and positive exchange of views" on the concerns from both sides, Sabri told reporters before leaving the U.N. headquarters in New York. He is to return home late Thursday for talks with his Arab counterparts in preparation for the March 27 Arab League summit.

"The U.N. side raised its concerns and we raised our own concerns," he said. "We shall meet again in the middle of April to continue our dialogue."

"So far so good," Annan told reporters without elaborating during a break from talks with Sabri, the first such discussions with an Iraqi ministerial delegation since February 27, 2001.

"It was a positive and constructive start, with the secretary- general particularly pleased the talks were focused as he hoped they would be," Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said during a lunch break.

The talks took place against the heightened U.S. threat since U. S. President George W. Bush made Iraq one of the three countries of the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech in January. He demanded Baghdad accept U.N. inspectors or face the consequences.

But the Iraqi permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, insisted that the Iraqi request for the talks " has nothing to do with the ...American threat, particularly nothing to do with that."

Sabri was accompanied by the Iraqi permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammed Al-Douri, Iraqi Foreign Ministry official Saeed Hasan and Hussam Mohammed Amin, the Iraqi government's main liaison with U.N. inspectors.

To underline his position, Annan has invited Hans Blix, the leader of the U.N. Iraqi inspection commission, to sit by his side and face the Iraqi officials for the first time since he took over the job two years ago.

The U.N. inspectors left Iraq in mid-December 1998, on the eve of a U.S.-British bombing raid, and have not been allowed to return since. The arms experts now want access to determine whether Iraq has abandoned or continued to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

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