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The United States decided to introduce next week a UN Security Council resolution designed to lift the sanctions imposed on Iraq for more than a decade.
The resolution would limit the involvement of the United Nations in post-war Iraq to a consultative role, The Washington Post reported Friday.
The US administration's decision was made at a meeting of top Bush national security advisers Wednesday, the paper quoted senior government officials as saying.
The resolution would also direct UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to name a special representative who can work with US officials in Baghdad on humanitarian and reconstruction program and on the formation of an Iraqi Interim Authority.
With the end of the Iraqi war, the United States has called repeatedly for an end to the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq, part of what US president Bush called "axis of evil," soon after the gulf war.
However, disputes over who should play a dominant role in the reconstruction of post-war Iraq have come to the surface, with the Americans insisting that the United States should have a control over Iraq rather than the United Nations.
The decision, according to the paper, essentially adopted the Pentagon's proposal for a broad elimination of all UN control over Iraq, rather than the State Department's preferred step-by-step approach.
The United States expected that the debate and consultations within the United Nations on the resolution will take several weeks, the paper said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2003)
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