Second French flight to test Iraq sanctions

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- A French plane is to fly to Baghdad on Friday, the second such flight in a week testing U.N. sanctions against Iraq, organizers said on Tuesday.

The plane, carrying French politicians and intellectuals, will fly as the United Nations Security Council is deadlocked in a debate on whether permission from the U.N. sanctions committee is needed for such flights, or a mere notification is enough.

Organizers, including former French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson and two other ex-cabinet ministers, said the chartered plane would leave Paris on Friday morning and return on Sunday.

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Organizers said they had chartered a plane from a partner airline of Air France and would name the company only once the flight plan had been validated by aviation authorities.

A spokeswoman for the French national carrier named the airline as Euralair, but denied it was a partner.

A spokeswoman for Euralair, which sent a plane to Baghdad last Friday, denied it would operate next Friday's flight. Euralair had denied any information about last week's flight.

Organizers had first tried to charter a plane from Air France, but the airline said it would need to carry out technical inspections at Baghdad airport before sending one of its aircraft.

The dispute over last week's French flight was the latest attempt by Iraq's sympathizers in the council -- France, Russia and China-- to chip away at the sanctions, introduced in August 1990 when Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.

At issue is a September 1990 resolution that imposed air and sea embargoes against Iraq. The flight ban has varying interpretations that have never been resolved, even by U.N. legal experts.

Russia and France dispute the U.S. and British view that all flights to Iraq need permission.

They say this applies only to freight and commercial passenger flights and are expected to ignore any objections or requests for delays in flights to Baghdad in the future, diplomats said.

France submitted a proposal on Monday that would end the committee's practice of requiring 24 hours prior notification of any flight so that members had time to register objections

A Russian request for a fourth flight to Iraq in as many weeks is currently before the sanctions committee along with one from Iceland and Jordan.

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