FRANCE offered an olive branch to the United States yesterday by proposing the immediate suspension of non-military sanctions on Iraq without waiting for United Nations inspectors to certify that the country is free of weapons of mass destruction.

The French proposal, made at a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council on the future of weapons inspections, met the Americans halfway on President Bush’s demand that sanctions be brought to an end.

Jean-Marc de La Sablière, the French Ambassador to the UN, said that the final lifting of sanctions was linked to the UN verifying that Iraq does not possess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons or the ballistic missiles to deliver them.

But he said that France was ready to move more quickly to suspend “civilian sanctions” and to revamp the existing “Oil-for-Food” programme, which puts the country’s oil revenues under UN supervision. “The lifting of the sanctions . . . is linked to the certification of disarmament of Iraq. Meanwhile, we could suspend the sanctions,” M de La Sablière said. “We suspend sanctions and adjust the Oil-for-Food programme with the idea of a phasing-out.”

Russia signalled that it was open to France’s proposal. “The full and final verification that there is no trace of (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq is necessary for total lifting of all sanctions,” Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Ambassador, said. “Anything short of that could be done on the basis of a Security Council decision, so the French proposal is not against Security Council procedures.”

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador, said, however, that Washington’s objective was the elimination of the sanctions: “We believe that, because of the dramatically changed circumstances in Iraq, sanctions should be lifted as soon as possible.”

The debate over the future of sanctions took place as the 15-nation Council held its first talks with Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, since the outbreak of war just over a month ago.

The overwhelming majority of the Council’s members want the UN inspectors to return to finish the job for which they were first sent to Iraq 12 years ago. But the United States, which was unhappy with Dr Blix’s performance before the war, is reluctant to allow the inspectors back in. White House officials made clear that President Bush saw no immediate role for UN weapons inspectors in Iraq.

Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said that uncovering Saddam Hussein’s banned weapons programmes was now a job for US and British forces. In a gibe at Dr Blix, Mr Fleischer said that the US had always insisted that weapons could be uncovered only by talking to Iraqi scientists, the kind of interviews that the US feels Dr Blix did not push for hard enough before diplomacy broke down.

Mr Fleischer said: “The coalition has taken on responsibility for the dismantling of Iraq’s (weapons of mass destruction) and missile programmes, which is part of the international community’s shared goal. But we are looking forward, not backward.”

Washington has hired about ten former UN inspectors and is mounting a military effort to help to ferret out Iraq’s suspected weapons programmes. Mr Fleischer insisted that coalition forces would leave no room for dispute that any weapons discoveries were genuine. “The process will be transparent,” he said.

With Dr Blix due to retire at the end of June, British diplomats are trying to play for time in the apparent hope that Washington will be better disposed to the next chief inspector. Diplomats say that Rolf Ekeus, the Swede who ran the UN inspection effort for most of the 1990s, may be asked to return to the UN to verify Iraq’s disarmament.

'Falsified' documents claim

Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said that the US and British governments used “falsified” documents to justify the war against Iraq. “I think it has been one of the disturbing elements that so much of the intelligence on which the capitals (Washington and London) built their case seems to have been shaky. They may have got this fake contract from somewhere. The CIA says that it got a copy from the UK. I certainly do not suggest that UK intelligence would have fabricated it.” He added: “I think that is very, very disturbing. Who falsifies this? And is it not disturbing that the intelligence agencies that should have all the technical means at their disposal did not discover that this was falsified?”

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