Cooperate with Butler, France tells Saddam

France has called on Iraq to reach an understanding with UN weapons inspectors as part of the process of getting the sanctions against it lifted.

"France hopes that Iraq will agree to cooperate fully with Unscom [UN Special Commission in charge of disarming Iraq] and thus avoid any recourse to force," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said on Monday, quoted by AFP news agency.

"Iraq must understand that to reach the end of the tunnel, that is to say the lifting of sanctions, it must reach an understanding with Mr Richard Butler, the head of the UN Special Commission in charge of disarming Iraq, on how to cooperate with Unscom, and meet its international obligations," she said.

"We hope that Mr Butler will achieve his objectives, that is to say find a way to cooperate on the last point of controversy with the Iraqis so that Unscom can work as effectively as possible, and so that it is possible to little by little move on to long-term control of the various aspects of Iraqi disarmament and, in turn, decide to lift the embargo," the spokeswoman said. "We hope that Mr Butler's very important mission will succeed," she concluded.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.