Airstrikes likely to complicate upcoming U.N.-Iraq talks

by Edith M. Lederer
The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — The latest allied airstrikes near Baghdad are likely to complicate upcoming U.N.-Iraqi talks aimed at breaking a stalemate over U.N. sanctions and getting weapons inspectors back into the country.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is to meet with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf on Feb. 26-27 for talks that had been seen as a chance to start a dialogue on the intertwined issues of sanctions and weapons inspections.

In a letter to Annan and the Security Council, al-Sahhaf said the U.N. chief should "condemn the dangerous aggression and the increase of tension" and should take "speedy steps to prevent such attacks from taking place again," the official Iraqi News Agency said yesterday.

Iraq wants the United Nations to lift crippling economic sanctions imposed after the country invaded Kuwait in 1990. The United Nations says Iraq must first let inspectors in to make sure President Saddam Hussein is not developing weapons of mass destruction.

Though a major breakthrough had not been expected from the meeting, the fact that Baghdad requested it and sent such a high-level delegation was seen as positive.

Iraq's supporters on the Security Council — Russia, China and France — had been hoping the United States and Britain would help their efforts to nudge Iraq into cooperation with weapons inspections.

Instead, U.S. and British warplanes launched their most serious attack on Iraq in two years, hitting air defense and radar sites south of Baghdad on Friday night.

The Pentagon said the attack was meant to thwart Iraq's improving capability to target U.S. and British planes that patrol a no-fly zone set up over southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.

Russia, France and China all said the airstrikes were unprovoked and will damage international efforts to resolve the sanctions issue.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan hopes the meetings will go ahead as scheduled "because all the major issues remain unresolved and unless we talk out these differences we don't think they can be resolved."