After suspending its own embargoes against Iraq, the US hoped to introduce a Security Council resolution by Friday that would lift decade-old UN sanctions and allow Iraq oil exports to resume. The resolution would phase out the UN oil-for-food humanitarian programme over several months but honour some of the existing $13 billion in outstanding contracts for food, medicine and other civilian goods ordered by the ousted government of Saddam Hussein, diplomats said. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday the draft was expected to be given to all 15 council members this week and would include a ‘‘vital role’’ for the UN in a post-war Iraq. But diplomats said that while the resolution called for a UN coordinator in Iraq, the job was ill-defined and appeared to leave nearly all power in the hands of the US and its allies. US soldiers find suspect mobile germ warfare lab in Iraq: Pentagon WASHINGTON: US Forces in Iraq have found a trailer used by the Saddam regime as a mobile biological weapons laboratory, a Pentagon official said on Wednesday The announcement was made by Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of Defence for Intelligence, during a Pentagon briefing. Cambone said no actual germ warfare agents have yet been discovered in the lab but added that the trailer would be disassembled and searched for evidence of weapons. Cambone said a ‘‘mobile production facility’’ painted in military colours came into the hands of US forces on April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint near the town of Tall Kayf in northern Iraq. The trailer was found on a heavy-equipment transporter typically used for carrying tanks, he added. Some manuscripts and artifacts missing from Baghdad museum recovered WASHINGTON: US Customs agents announced on Wednesday that investigators, working with military officials and Iraqi authorities, have recovered about 700 artifacts and located 39,400 manuscripts that went missing from Baghdad’s National Museum of Antiquities during chaos and looting that followed the US invasion of Iraq. A Homeland Security Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said the recovered artifacts include the broken statue of an Assyrian from the 9th century B.C. and a chest filled with valuable manuscripts and parchments. (Agencies) France, Russia, China and others had advocated a stronger UN role to give a US-chosen Iraqi authority international legitimacy. However, the resolution says that a UN representative named by Secretary General Kofi Annan would have a seat on a board that would oversee revenues from Iraq’s oil industry, along with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, the envoys said. But the draft does not call for the return of UN arms inspectors to verify that Iraq no longer has alleged weapons of mass destruction, as specified in UN resolutions over the past decade and which council members have demanded. Without adoption of the resolution, no Iraqi or US entity in Baghdad has the legal authority to export oil. Washington wants the measure approved by June 3, when the existing oil-for-food programme is up for renewal. (Reuters)
