New moves on Iraq embargo

Assad said Syrian pipeline would be put under sanctions

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to try to win approval for a modified package of UN sanctions against Iraq when he meets Nato foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters after his first tour of the Middle East since taking office, Mr Powell said Arab leaders had expressed solid support for his efforts to forge a new consensus on the embargo.

We get agreement and we make a judgment, and frankly we also get the support of the Arab League in a few weeks' time

Colin Powell

The new US approach involves apparently re-targetting sanctions by tightening restrictions on Iraq's leadership while easing those on its people.

Mr Powell said one way of reducing shortages in Iraq was for Washington to look again at its criteria for blocking the sales of items with a possible military use.

But at the same time, he said the US wanted to increase efforts to prevent the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, from developing weapons of mass destruction.

The BBC's State Department correspondent Richard Lister says the new approach to Iraqi sanctions represents a major shift in US policy.

He says Washington seems to have recognised that the only way to rebuild support for sanctions is to allay concerns about their impact on the Iraqi people.

Syrian pipeline

Mr Powell ended his tour in Damascus, where President Bashar al-Assad assured him that Syria's oil pipeline from Iraq would be put under UN sanctions.

Mr Powell said he was told that the pipeline, oil going through it, and any revenue generated would be put under UN supervision.

The United States says it has evidence Syria has been importing up to 150,000 barrels of Iraqi oil a day since November without UN approval.

Syria made no comment on the pipeline, saying only that an "effective and neutral" US role had been discussed. The country's official media had earlier criticised Mr Powell's tour for focusing more on Iraq than the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mr Annan is cautious, but says he has hope

Mr Powell arrived in Damascus after a brief stop-over in Saudi Arabia, whose air bases are essential to the air exclusion zones imposed by the US and Britain over northern and southern Iraq.

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

Air strikes

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

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is currently holding talks with an Iraqi delegation on possible steps which could lead to an end to blockade.

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

Iraq wants the sanctions - in force since the Gulf War - to be lifted.

There will be no return for any inspectors to Iraq. Even the sanctions are totally lifted - because Iraq had implemented all the requirements of resolution 687

Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

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, nor the capacity to build them in the future.

Iraq's foreign minister told Mr Annan that Baghdad would not accept the return of UN weapons inspectors even if the sanctions against it were lifted.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf indicated that Baghdad might co-operate with a looser form of weapons monitoring - but only if that were also applied to Israel's nuclear programme.

Three of the permanent members of the UN Security Council - France, Russia and China - are sympathetic to the notion that the UN's sanctions should either be lifted or dropped.