LONDON, April 25: United Nations weapons inspectors should be allowed to resume their work in tracking down any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Friday.

“I hope we can ensure the United Nations has that ‘vital role’ that (US) President George Bush and (British) Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about. That would include an important role for UNMOVIC,” Mr Straw said in an interview with BBC radio.

UNMOVIC, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission led by Hans Blix, left Iraq on March 18, two days before US and British forces invaded the country.

“If you are asking me ‘should the United Nations have a vital role to play so far as Iraq is concerned, including in respects of weapons inspections’, the answer to that is yes,” the foreign secretary said.

“I’m not able to promise you that it can be automatically delivered because it depends on negotiation in the (UN) Security Council,” he said.

Mr Straw’s comments contrast with those made by the US ambassador to the UN and the British defence minister earlier this week.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, told reporters on Tuesday that the United States and Britain had “assumed responsibility for the disarming of Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction” and intended to keep it “for the foreseeable future”. And British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on Thursday the verification of any discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq need not automatically be carried out by the United Nations.

“We need independent verification of the discoveries I’m confident we will make,” Mr Hoon said at the war command headquarters at As-Saliyah, Qatar.

“I do not necessarily believe it would be the United Nations that would provide that verification (but) it could well be the United Nations,” he said.

Mr Straw told BBC radio he welcomed news that former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz had been taken into custody by US-led forces, who now hold 12 of the 55 most-wanted members of President Saddam Hussein’s government.

“They should provide some important information about the nature of the regime,” Mr Straw said. —AFP