UNITED NATIONS, Feb 2: Iraq on Tuesday called on the UN Security Council to lift all sanctions and stop using the country's oil revenue to pay compensation to the victims of the 1991 Gulf War and the salaries of UN weapons inspectors.

At a press conference Iraq's UN Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie called the sanctions "anachronistic and inappropriate" and said it was time for the Security Council to recognize that Iraq was a "much more internationally Friendly" country that wanted to be at peace with its neighbours.

He said that the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which is responsible for dismantling Iraqi programmes to build chemical or biological weapons or long-range missiles, was no longer needed.

The commission's inspectors left Iraq just before the March 2003 US-led war. UNMOVIC is funded by proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil, at a cost of more than 10 million dollars a year.

"I think it's generally acknowledged that Iraq now does not pose such a threat, and does not in its present form have any weapons of mass destruction. "And, therefore, to continue to fund a bureaucracy to do what, to just continue to say every day that they have found nothing?" Mr Sumaidaie said.