The UN Security Council president has welcomed proposals by the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, for a "comprehensive review" of the Iraqi disarmament process.
Ambassador Danilo Turk of Slovenia, at a news briefing here yesterday, said: "We at the Slovenian delegation support that." But he noted that details of Mr Annan's proposal, put forward during a closed-door council session on Thursday, were sketchy and would take time to work out.
Mr Annan, who defused a crisis with Iraq over UN arms inspectors' access to presidential sites in February, proposed the overall assessment as the council met to discuss a new standoff with Iraq. On Wednesday, the Iraqi leadership warned that all intrusive inspections by the weapons inspectors would be frozen, following the collapse of talks on Monday between the UN Special Commission chairman, Mr Richard Butler and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz.
The council described the Iraqi decision as "totally unacceptable."
Mr Annan suggested on Thursday that the 15-member council could take stock of Iraqi compliance with Security Council resolutions, recognise progress in a number of areas and examine ways forward.
The council should also bear in mind "the ultimate objective of the exercise, which is to ensure that Iraq is effectively disarmed, and that the Iraqi people are enabled to take their place amongst the community of nations, free of sanctions", Mr Annan said.
Meanwhile, two teams from the UN Special Commission (Unscom) on disarmament went out to work as usual in Baghdad yesterday as Iraq called for the organisation to be dismantled. Four Unscom cars, accompanied by members of Iraq's national department of monitoring, left the commission's headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad in the morning.
It was not clear where the cars were going or whether it was a monitoring or inspection mission. Unscom in Baghdad and New York was unavailable for comment.
As the teams in Baghdad continued their work, the Iraqi press called for Unscom to be shut down and for the eight-year oil embargo imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait to be lifted. "The Security Council and the international community have a moral obligation to force Unscom to end its missions which have gone on too long without reason," the government daily Al- Iraq said.