BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said on Tuesday it wanted a United Nations mission due to arrive in Baghdad on Wednesday to set a short time frame for lifting U.N. sanctions imposed when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. "We hope that the international mission has a solution to Iraq's problems such as ... setting a short and reasonable time frame to lift the unjust embargo on Iraq," the government newspaper al-Jumhouriya said. The three-member mission is to meet Iraqi officials to try to resolve a crisis over Iraq's order expelling Americans from U.N. arms inspection teams in Iraq. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a statement carried by the Iraqi news agency on Monday, said the U.N. team was "supposed to come for a dialogue...to put things in order". The United States rejected Saddam's appeal for a dialogue, saying it was more interested in Iraq letting U.N. weapons inspectors do their job under the terms of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire.

The newspaper said Iraq wanted the mission to "guarantee the implementation of the (U.N.) Security Council resolutions without infringing Iraq's dignity, security and the security of its leading establishments". The Iraqi leadership said last Wednesday that it would no longer cooperate with American members of U.N. arms inspection teams. Baghdad gave the 10 Americans among the 100 inspectors in Iraq one week to leave the country. Iraqi authorities on Monday blocked American members of a U.N. weapons inspection team from entering an arms site, prompting the United Nations to halt inspections.

Autor: RETUERS