Annan, Iraqi official to meet at Islamic summit

DOHA, Qatar (Reuters) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Vice-President Ezzat Ibrahim are due to discuss deadlocked efforts to ease a decade of sanctions on Iraq, U.N. and Iraqi officials said on Monday.

The officials said the meeting will take place on the sidelines of the three-day Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit which opened in Qatar on Sunday. A U.N. source said the meeting might take place later on Monday.

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An Iraqi official said Annan had requested the meeting, describing it as "more than a general discussion. It will certainly touch on Iraq's rejection of Security Council Resolution 1284."

The resolution offers an easing of trade sanctions, imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, if Baghdad allows inspectors with the power to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to resume their work.

But Iraq has repeatedly said it would not accept a new U.N. arms inspection team, arguing that it has already destroyed all its banned weapons of mass destruction.

U.N. inspectors have been barred from Iraq since the last team left in December 1998. It withdrew shortly before U.S. and British planes launched a four-day air campaign on the grounds that Iraq was hindering the work of arms inspectors.

Annan, in his speech to the OIC leaders on Sunday, called on Iraq to cooperate with the United Nations.

"The Iraqi leadership will achieve more with cooperation with the international community including its neighbors, than through confrontation," he said.

"I ... believe that the humanitarian situation in Iraq causes a moral dilemma to the United Nations," he added.

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