BEIJING, Jan 27: Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz arrived in China on Sunday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, after a trip to Russia where he sought support in his country’s confrontation with the United States.

The visit comes amid threats by the United States to use force against Iraq if it refuses to allow the return of United Nations arms inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998 complaining they were being prevented from performing their duties.

Xinhua did not say whom Aziz would meet in Beijing, nor say how long he would stay. It said only that bilateral relations “and other issues of common concern” would be on the agenda.

The Foreign Ministry declined to give details of his schedule.

US President George W. Bush has warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein he would face the consequences if UN inspectors were not allowed to return to Baghdad, triggering speculation Washington could target Iraq in its war on terrorism following the Sept 11 attacks on US cities.

The dispatch of inspectors, intended to determine whether Baghdad held chemical and biological weapons, was part of UN actions against Iraq undertaken after the 1991 Gulf War.

The action, authorised by UN Security Council resolution 681, also included economic sanctions against Iraq.

Following talks with Aziz, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Thursday that Moscow was opposed to any US military operation against Iraq and it wanted sanctions against the nation to be lifted.

Beijing has also been sympathetic to Iraq’s demand for abolition of the sanctions. China, like Russia, is a member of the UN Security Council.

The United States wants “smart sanctions”, which would cut the list of goods requiring UN approval before reaching Iraq, while tightening controls over imports deemed usable for military purposes.

US warplanes patrolling “no-fly zones” imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War bombed an anti-aircraft site on Thursday, the third such attack this week.

US and British warplanes have patrolled the zones in northern and southern Iraq since the war and are challenged periodically by anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.—Reuters