BAGHDAD (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Iraq said it would consider accepting monitoring of its weapons program if trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations were lifted.
``We will consider a return of the monitoring (of weapons) after the lifting of sanctions,'' Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in an interview with the London-based Arabic-language Alhayat newspaper published on Wednesday.
U.N. weapons inspectors have been barred from Iraq since December 1998.
The last team left shortly before the United States and British launched a bombing campaign after the weapons inspectors said Baghdad was obstructing their work.
The arms experts had been trying to investigate sites where Iraq was suspected of storing or manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
Sabri said the U.N. Security Council should first lift sanctions and rid the Middle East region of weapons of mass destruction before Iraq would consider allowing any new monitoring.
On Monday the United States accused Iraq and North Korea of having biological weapons.
Iraq admits it once had a program to develop germ warfare weapons, but says all stocks were subsequently destroyed.
However, Washington says Baghdad has strengthened its biological weaponry since barring the U.N. inspectors.
The US-led United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Baghdad has rejected a U.N. resolution adopted in December 1999 which calls for the suspension of sanctions if it allows weapons inspectors to return.