Powell to press Syria over Iraq

Mr Powell visited Jordan on his way to Syria

US Secretary of State Colin Powell travels to Syria on Monday as part of an effort to rebuild the coalition created a decade ago against President Saddam Hussein.

Visiting the Middle East for the first time in his new role, Mr Powell is trying to persuade increasingly reluctant Arab nations to maintain economic sanctions against Iraq.

Before going to Damascus, he stopped over briefly in Saudi Arabia, whose air bases are essential to the air exclusion zones imposed by the US and Britain operate over northern and southern Iraq.

Saudi Arabia joined in wider Arab condemnation of the raids carried out earlier this month on targets near Baghdad.

Mr Powell's tour coincides with the first significant United Nations discussions on Iraq in two years.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is holding talks with an Iraqi delegation in New York on the possibility of lifting UN sanctions.

Smartening sanctions

In Damascus, Mr Powell intends to ask Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to halt his country's imports of Iraqi oil - 100,000 barrels a day according to the US - without UN approval.

The US wants Syrian President al-Assad on side

He will also set out US and British ideas to replace the current sanctions regime with so-called "smart sanctions", designed to target the Iraqi leadership specifically rather than the country as a whole.

Many critics of the existing sanctions say they have damaged the health and welfare of ordinary Iraqis without restraining Saddam Hussein.

International support for sanctions was further eroded by the latest air strikes near Baghdad.

Iraq wants the sanctions - in force since the Gulf War - lifted, but the UN insists that arms inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998, should be allowed to return, to ensure Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

UN Breakthrough unlikely

BBC correspondent Mark Devenport says that prospects for immediate progress at the New York talks are not good.

Mr Annan is cautious, but says he has hope

Nevertheless, Mr Annan said, "You have to have some hope. Otherwise I wouldn't be getting into this exercise. It may take some time."

The talks are scheduled to start with disarmament issues in the morning and turn to humanitarian concerns later in the day.

Exploring any room for flexibility, whether it involves smart sanctions or not, will undoubtedly take many months to come, our correspondent says.

But some reports suggest Iraq may be more flexible than its publicly stated position.

Baghdad may be willing to accept some form of monitoring of its weapons capability that is less intrusive than weapons inspectors in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Documents in hand

Iraq's foreign minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who is leading the Iraqi delegation, said he was going to New York with documentation that showed his country was free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Sahaf: Iraq wants the sanctions dropped

Correspondents say that, as a former general, Mr Powell remains deeply concerned about Baghdad's military ambitions.

But Iraq does not see smart sanctions as any better than the smart weapons used against it.

It views them as a poisonous plot intended to keep the embargo in existence.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein hopes the sanctions will be lifted altogether or continue crumbling as his neighbours no longer enforce them.