WASHINGTON, May 29: The United States said on Thursday that all diplomats in Iraq had lost the immunity they enjoyed under the government of President Saddam Hussein.

“They are accredited to a regime that is no longer existent and therefore their accreditation would have lapsed. They ... don’t have diplomatic status any more,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a daily briefing.

Mr Boucher initially said diplomatic missions in Baghdad had also lost their protected status but he later said he would check to see if the properties had some residual immunity.

The question arose on Wednesday when US troops detained a Palestinian diplomat and four Iraqis on charges of carrying illegal weapons in Baghdad, a city still awash with guns following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Charge d’affaires Najah Abdul Rahman denied carrying a weapon. As he was detained outside the Palestinian mission, he shouted, “They searched the embassy... They are targeting the embassy.”

Mr Boucher said the United States, the main occupying power in Iraq, was discouraging foreign diplomats from entering Iraq because there was no Iraqi government to accredit them and grant them the normal privileges of diplomatic status.

Even diplomats who have entered Iraq with the approval of US forces and who are cooperating on reconstruction do not have diplomatic status in Iraq, he said.

But some diplomats stayed in Baghdad through the US invasion and are still there, living in missions which may be the property of their governments. “We do not regard those as diplomatic missions,” the spokesman said.

The Palestinian mission raised a particular question because the United States, unlike the government of Saddam Hussein, does not recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of a sovereign state.

Mr Boucher said the United States reserved the right to exclude undesirable people from Iraq but was not yet at the stage where it could accredit diplomats.—Reuters