Russia yesterday urged the United Nations to reject a US call for the removal of sanctions against Baghdad until international arms inspectors could confirm that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, writes Daniel McLaughlin, in Moscow.
"This decision cannot be automatic. It requires the fulfilment of certain conditions stipulated in relevant UN Security Council resolutions on Iraq," the Foreign Minister, Mr Igor Ivanov, said. He was commenting on Mr Bush's pledge to propose a UN resolution removing the 13-year embargo.
"To take such a decision, we have to be certain whether there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not."
Earlier, a Foreign Ministry official underlined Moscow's annoyance at Washington's attempts to set the pace and conditions of change in Iraq. Moscow fiercely opposed the war and now wants the UN and not the US to lead the rebuilding of the country's wrecked infrastructure.
"Regime change in Baghdad is not a condition for lifting economic sanctions on Iraq," the unnamed official told the Interfax news agency. He stressed that UN inspectors must be allowed to finish their search for chemical and biological arms.
"Lifting sanctions in any other way will be seen as violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and will affect the unity and authority of the Security Council."
Having lost their battle to avert war, France and Russia - as veto-wielding members of the Security Council - may now see the sanctions as their best bargaining chip in talks with Washington over the UN's role in Iraq.
Russian energy companies are also angry at the prospect of US oil companies being handed the rights to develop Iraq's huge oil reserves, and the tearing up of deals with Iraq which Russian firms have nurtured for years as they waiting for sanctions to be lifted.
Mr Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's lower house of parliament, said yesterday that Washington's haste to lift the sanctions raised doubts about its motivation for war.
"We should determine just what the United States is after - something seems wrong; the approach is too mercenary," Mr Rogozin told Interfax.
"Today the United Nations controls practically nothing in Iraq, so the sanctions will actually be lifted not from Russian companies but from the Americans, who will be given the juiciest parts of the Iraqi oil industry."
Mr Bush on Wednesday said: "Now that Iraq is liberated, the United Nations should lift sanctions on that country."
The White House said the US would propose a UN resolution to end the sanctions "in the near future".