Baghdad -- The US army took over the control of Baghdad Saturday from the Marines, who started to pull out from the Iraqi capital they captured 10 days ago.

Soldiers from the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division have replaced the Marines in many areas of Baghdad Saturday, while elements of the US 4th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division also moved into the city.

Washington -- The Bush administration plans to ask the United Nations to lift economic sanctions on Iraq in phases in a bid to bypass opposition from other countries, The New York Times reported Saturday.

US officials said that instead of a single UN Security Council resolution to lift the sanctions, the United States would seek three or four resolutions over several months, gradually turning over parts of the economy to an Iraqi authority assembled with US guidance.

Madrid -- Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar will meet with his French and British counterparts next week for talks about the post-war reconstruction in Iraq, officials said Saturday.

Aznar will travel to Paris Tuesday to talk with French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on the Iraq conflict as well as the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. He will be in London Wednesday to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Baghdad -- The train service from the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr to Basra was restored Saturday and expected to facilitate the aid operations in Iraq.

British forces taking control of Basra, the second largest Iraqi city, relaunched the train service Saturday with a trial run, which covered only 30 km of the 50 km-link to Basra.

Baghdad -- Although the war is nearing the end, Iraqi children in Iraq are facing another danger of bomblets left over by the US forces as the number of casualties kept rising in the past days.

Two children were killed and two others were injured Saturday afternoon when a bomblet that they found at a garden in Rahnania, western Baghdad, exploded, a doctor at the Al-Karkh hospital told Xinhua.

Islamabad -- Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali stressed here on Saturday that if requested, his country would only join the reconstruction process in Iraq under the auspices of the United Nations.

(Xinhua News Agency April 20, 2003)