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Annan steps up pressure on SC to choose Iraqi arms chief

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan told key Security Council members to agree by Friday on one of three candidates to head a new U.N. disarmament agency for Iraq or come to another conclusion quickly, diplomats said.

Annan had hoped to announce on Friday his choice of a new executive chairman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) created by the Security Council on Dec. 17.

Aides said he was concerned by the failure of the council's five permanent members to agree on a candidate and meet their own Sunday deadline, a reflection of the deep divisions that paralysed policy toward Iraq for a year.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters after Annan held a Thursday meeting with the five permanent council members -- the United States, Russia, Britain, China and France -- he would meet the five again on Friday. He then plans to meet the council's 10 nonpermanent members.

According to a senior Chinese diplomat, the three candidates mentioned by Annan were:

- Celso Amorim, Brazil's former U.N. ambassador, now at the United Nations in Geneva, who chaired several panels last year on U.N. policy toward Iraq. The United States and Britain last week opposed him on the grounds that he did not have a disarmament background.

- Pasi Patokallio, a Finnish disarmament expert and now his country's ambassador to Israel and Cyprus. The U.S. and Britain backed him, but others were against his candidacy.

- Rolf Ekeus, who headed the first U.N. Iraq disarmament body, the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), from its inception in 1991 until 1997, when he became Sweden's ambassador in Washington. Iraq is said to oppose Ekeus, and diplomats indicated Russia and China would follow suit.

UNSCOM has been in limbo for the past year and was replaced by the new commission, created by the council in a resolution last month. That measure, which drew abstentions from Russia, China and France, holds out the prospect of a suspension of the sanctions in force against Iraq since its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, provided it cooperates with UNMOVIC.

U.N. weapons inspectors have not been allowed back in Iraq since December 1998, shortly before the United States and Britain launched four days of air strikes against Iraqi targets on the grounds that Baghdad had failed to cooperate with U.N. weapons teams.

Iraq says it has long been rid of any weapons of mass destruction and sanctions should be completely lifted.-Reuters