US/UN: The United States was to submit a revised version of its draft resolution for post-war Iraq to the UN Security Council late last night, hoping for a vote tomorrow, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Mr John Negroponte, said.
He told reporters he would unveil the new text at a meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. local time, where he would "propose to delegations that they seek instructions so that they will be prepared to vote from Wednesday forward."
Mr Negroponte said the revised text "is forthcoming and makes an effort to address the concerns and issues raised" by other council members since it was first submitted May 9th.
"We have gone just about as far as we can in meeting the concerns expressed by other delegations," he said.
The United States wants the council to lift immediately the UN economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990, phase out the UN's humanitarian programme within four months, and give the US-led occupying powers broad control of Iraq's oil revenues.
Mr Negroponte said there was new language in the text "fleshing out the role of the representative of the Secretary General," but he did not go into details.
That appeared to indicate that the United States had agreed to at least some changes sought by France, one of the five permanent council members and a leading critic of the US-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
In Paris, a spokeswoman for President Jacques Chirac said France would back the draft if it were modified to include more explicit references to the role of the United Nations.
The United States wanted the UN to have "a vital role in the humanitarian area, in facilitating the return to representative government in Iraq, and in many other areas - the protection of human rights and so forth," Mr Negroponte said.
"There are eight or nine of these functions listed in our draft resolution," he added.
On Thursday, the United States made a dozen changes to its original draft, in an apparent attempt to meet the concerns of Russia, another of the five permanent council members.
The most significant of these was a proposal to deal with Baghdad's massive debts through multilateral mechanisms such as the Paris Club.
The draft was also amended to say that Iraq's oil and oil revenues would be immune from legal action until the debt restructuring process was complete and until the country had "an internationally recognised representative government."
Russia, one of Iraq's largest creditors, said last week that legal questions about debts and contracts must be settled before it votes for the text.
The three other permanent council members are the United States and Britain, a co-sponsor of the draft, and China, which sides with France and Russia.
Mr Negroponte said the revised draft contained nothing to satisfy the demand of some council members that the UN arms inspectors certify Iraq to be free of weapons of mass destruction before sanctions are lifted.
"The coalition has taken over responsibility for the inspections," he said, referring to the US and British forces now occupying Iraq, and adding that "our draft resolution foresees no role for UNMOVIC" - the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which carried out seven weeks of inspections but was evacuated three days before war began on March 20th.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency had expressed frustration on Sunday over the US government's failure to respond to his request that inspectors return to Iraq and finish their job.
Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his inspectors needed to investigate reports of widespread looting at Iraq's nuclear facilities and possible radiation sickness among the civilian population.
"I am getting frustrated that we haven't had a response," Mr ElBaradei told reporters before speaking to graduates of Tufts University's Fletcher School.
Mr ElBaradei said he had been seeking permission for the past month from the US State Department, but had not heard back.
"We read all these reports about material that's being looted, that's being stolen, and obviously a lot of radioactive sources that people have been exposed to," he said.
"That obviously is a major worry for us."
The IAEA, which was in charge of searching for atomic weapons during its mission in Iraq, found no indications the regime was rebuilding its nuclear arms programme, as Washington charged.