U.S., joined by U.K. and Spain, urges UN to lift Iraqi sanctions
The United States is to present a draft resolution to the United Nations calling for an end to sanctions against Iraq.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the motion - co-signed by Britain and Spain - is likely to be put to the Security Council this week.
The resolution is also expected to map out a role for the UN in rebuilding Iraq.
US President George W Bush said he was getting the ball rolling by suspending a 1990 US law imposing sanctions on Iraq, as well as lifting some economic sanctions - a move announced earlier on Wednesday.
"The regime that the sanctions were directed against no longer rules Iraq," Mr Bush told reporters in Washington, alongside Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
[...]
But the BBC's Jon Leyne in Washington says Russia and some other council members are reluctant to relinquish their control over Iraq's oil, exercised under the sanctions regime.
Mr Powell, speaking after discussing the measure with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York, said the US was working to include Germany, France, Russia and China in the new resolution.
"Whatever happened in the past is in the past," he said.
The BBC's correspondent in Washington, Justin Webb, says the draft resolution is understood to call for the immediate lifting of sanctions and the phasing out over four months of the oil-for-food programme.
The resolution, he says, would create an international advisory board, including the UN secretary general, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to audit the spending of Iraq's oil revenue and ensure it was being used to benefit the Iraqi people.
Restrictions the US has eased include:
-rules which will allow the thousands of Iraqis resident in the US to send up to $500 a month to family and friends in Iraq.
-allowing humanitarian aid supplies to be sent to Iraq
-authorising any activity paid for by the US Government, including reconstruction moves by contractors
-permitting privately-funded humanitarian activities by US-based organisations.
However, restrictions on the export of goods which are controlled for national security purposes will remain, with a special government license being required for such trade.
housands of Iraqis living abroad have struggled since the sanctions were imposed to get money to loved ones back home.
Rubar Sandi, chairman of the US-Iraq Business Council in Washington DC, has been sending money to relatives for years - and has been among those who have led the lobbying to allow remittances and humanitarian assistance.
"This is the most fantastic news," he told BBC News Online shortly after the announcement."
"We've been pushing for this for a long time, so we can get to work back in Iraq."
I imagine that the Weasel Powers--especially France and Russia--will do a bit more whining about lifting these sanctions:
they know to doing so will not only reveal them to be the wrong-sided, appeasment-loving losers they are, but in that the Iraq oil-for-food program is the UN's biggest cash cow (with Putin's and Chirac's governments making untold millions on the side), Kofi and his homies don't wanna see their primary source of revenue go up in smoke.
But Kofi baby, the one thing you don't know or at least don't wanna admit is that it's
