MOSCOW, May 7: UN weapons inspectors must declare that Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction before UN sanctions on the country can be lifted, a top Russian foreign ministry official reiterated on Wednesday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov told the Interfax news agency that Moscow supported easing the sanctions regime in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

The top official said this required proof that “Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of producing them”.

“This question has not been clearly addressed yet, and UNMOVIC and the IAEA need to present reports which would close this dossier,” said Mr Fedotov, who holds the UN brief.

The United States has strongly resisted suggestions that the UN weapons inspection team, headed by Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix, should now resume its work in verifying Iraqi disarmament.

Mr ElBaradei is the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mr Blix is in charge of the disarmament agency, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

US undersecretary of state John Bolton restated that position on Monday during a visit to Moscow.

“I don’t think there is any role for the United Nations in the short term in searching for or identifying or securing weapons of mass destruction,” Mr Bolton told reporters.

However, he said a role for the UN could not be ruled out “somewhere down the road”.

Washington and London have been pressing for an end to the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 after its invasion of Kuwait.

But Russia and France, two other permanent members of the UN Security Council, argue that such a move would only be appropriate when UN weapons inspectors have established that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

Moscow and Paris also fear that an end to sanctions would effectively hand control of Iraq’s immense oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia’s, to the United States. —AFP