Annan Intends to Visit Iraq This Week: ReportUnited Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan intends to visit Baghdad this week to negotiate with the Iraqi side on issues such as arms inspections and the UN embargo, the official daily Babil reported November 20.Iraq has said that Annan can visit the country "at any time," but rejected his suggestion that he comes in the company of Hans Blix, executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) for Iraq, the report quoted an informed source as saying. However, the report did not mention when or where Annan said he planned to visit Iraq. On the sidelines of the Islamic summit that ran from November 12 to 13 in Doha, Qatar, Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, held talks with Annan and the two sides agreed to start "comprehensive dialog" either in Baghdad or at the UN headquarters without any preconditions. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz had said that Iraq was ready to hold "a comprehensive dialog" with the UN with no preconditions and that the dialog must not be conditioned on that Iraq accepts the UN Resolution 1284. The Resolution 1284, adopted last December, stipulates the return of UN arms inspectors to Iraq and offers to suspend the embargo for renewable periods of 120 days if the inspectors report that Iraq has cooperated "in all respects" with them and shown progress towards answering their outstanding questions about its disarmament. Iraq has rejected the resolution and barred the return of the inspectors who left Iraq at the end of 1998 shortly before the US and Britain launched a four-day air campaign against Iraqi targets. Iraq has been under sweeping UN sanctions since it invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990 and its lifting is conditioned on Iraq's total elimination of weapons of mass destruction. |
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