MOSCOW, Sept 28: After apparently failing in Paris to persuade French President Jacques Chirac to back a tough UN resolution on Iraq, US envoy Marc Grossman arrived in Moscow on Saturday for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, a US embassy spokesman said.

Grossman headed straight to the foreign ministry for talks in which he was to be accompanied by a British Foreign Office envoy, Peter Ricketts.

He arrived from Paris where he met French leaders on Friday, when Chirac reiterated his opposition to any resolution which would allow automatic armed recourse against Iraq, a position shared by another permanent Security Council member, China.

The talks are part of intense US lobbying of UN Security Council members as Washington seeks approval of a draft resolution that would enable the United States to take military action against Iraq in the event that Baghdad should not comply fully with the demands of UN-mandated weapons inspectors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has implied his opposition to a proposed new “tough” resolution on Iraq, favoured by Washington. On Thursday Putin again called for a solution to the Iraqi problem “on the basis of existing UN Security Council resolutions.”

Moscow said again on Saturday that it had not been convinced by a British dossier alleging that Iraq was planning to build up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, published earlier in the week.

“This dossier contains no new convincing proof of the presence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction or of Iraqi development of an illegal military programme,” Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.

Ivanov said Friday that “to delay the departure of (UN weapons inspectors) to Iraq — to which Baghdad assented earlier this month — would be an “unforgiveable error”.

The return of international inspectors to Iraq opens up the possibility for “an eventual lifting of the sanctions (against Iraq) and therefore a political solution to the problem,” he added.

Russia, traditionally an ally of Iraq on the Security Council, also “welcomed with pleasure” the efforts of the UN and Baghdad to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, in a Russian foreign ministry statement published on Friday-Saturday night.

Iraqi FM: Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri was greeted by Iraq’s old arch-foe Iran on Saturday.

Iraqi diplomats here said Sabri was lined up for two days of talks, including a meeting early Sunday with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi.

Kharazi was also on hand at Tehran’s airport to greet Sabri, whose arrival came just at the end of Iran’s “Sacred Defence Week” — a week of commemorations marking the beginning of Iraq’s 1980-1988 Western-backed war on the Islamic republic.—AFP