UNITED NATIONS, Feb 17: The United Nations on Wednesday rejected a US congress demand to allow UN officials to testify before a Congress committee investigating the UN's oil-for-food programme.

However, in a letter to Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who heads a US Senate panel, the UN said it would allow officials to testify behind closed doors. In the letter, Mark Malloch Brown, the chief of staff for Secretary General Kofi Annan, suggested the US Congress, which is handling numerous investigations, establish a briefing schedule that UN officials could attend.

US Senator Coleman also wants diplomatic immunity lifted on Benon Sevan, the former director of the now-defunct 67 billion dollar program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil in order to buy goods to alleviate the impact of the 1990 sanctions.

Mr Sevan is listed in Iraqi documents as having received oil allocations, which were then lifted by a small Panama-registered trading firm. But Mr Brown said in the letter that diplomatic immunity could be waived in certain circumstances but not "in relation to testimony under oath before national legislative bodies".

"Otherwise similar testimony would have to be offered to more than 190 legislators of UN member states," Malloch Brown wrote in the letter dated Feb 14, a day before the hearing.

The committee had wanted Dileep Nair, head of the UN watchdog agency to testify, but Malloch Brown proposed Dagfinn Knutsen, chief auditor of the program for future hearings.

Mr Coleman charged that Benon Sevan had received money, although another independent probe by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, is not certain and is still investigating. Until Mr Volcker finishes his probe, UN officials said Mr Sevan would retain his immunity.