British Prime Minister Tony Blair and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan discussed the humanitarian emergency caused by the US and British invasion of Iraq . In an interview on BBC radio after his meeting with Annan, Blair said he favoured the formation by the United Nations of a representative government in post-war Iraq. "Now what we need to do is to try and make sure that we have as representative a system of government as possible and that's something we need to work out with the UN," Blair said.

"That is why we agreed -- myself and (US) President Bush , (Spanish) Prime Minister Aznar at the summit that we had in the Azores -- that not just the humanitarian element but also the civil administration in Iraq should be governed by UN resolution."

Blair flew into New York after summit talks with President George W. Bush at the US presidential retreat at Camp David and met Annan for a total of 50 minutes, half of the time in private and half with aides.

Blair's delegation included Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock.
Annan was accompanied by the deputy secretary general, Louise Frechette, the chief coordinator of United Nations emergency relief operations, Kenzo Oshima, and Benon Sevan, head of the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

Minutes before Blair entered Annan's office, it was announced that members of the Security Council had agreed on a draft resolution to reactivate the programme, which was suspended when Annan ordered all UN staff out of Iraq last week on the eve of war.

Blair and Annan "welcomed the progress achieved on that front," Annan's spokesman's office said.

It said the two men also "reviewed the next steps in the search for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis."

Blair left for London Thursday night after meeting with Annan.

German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger told reporters he expected the draft to be put to the vote on Friday and said he hoped it would be adopted "by consensus" of the 15 council members.

Pleuger, head of the council's Iraq sanctions committee, said he had tabled the draft in final form -- a procedure known as putting it "in blue".

But a draft can be changed up to the moment of a vote, and one council diplomat said the United States and Russia were still unhappy with different parts of the text.

If adopted, the draft would authorize Annan to change the Iraqi government's priorities for the current six-month phase of the programme.

The resolution, to be renewed every 45 days, would empower him to rewrite contracts, sign new agreements with Iraq's suppliers and arrange new entry points for imports of food, medicine and other essentials.

It would also allow Annan "on an exceptional and reimbursable basis" to divert funds set aside from Iraq's oil revenues to compensate Kuwait for the 1990-91 invasion and occupation of their country, and use the money to meet humanitarian needs in Iraq.

The diplomat said the United States objected to that clause.

Earlier, Russia's ambassador to the UN, Sergei Lavrov, voiced his country's unease about using oil-for-food as a channel for emergency war relief.

"We will not support the proposal that the mechanism of the oil-for-food programme be adjusted to the military scenario," he told a public meeting of the council.

"While humanitarian objectives are important, there is no more urgent task than trying to halt the war and return to the path of a political settlement," he said.

At Camp David, both Bush and Blair had stressed the urgency of tackling humanitarian problems in Iraq and of preventing the aid issue from becoming politicised.

"We are confident that people will want to be seen to be helping to feed the Iraqis and that nobody will want to stand in the way of that," a British official said.

Bush and Blair have so far left undefined the United Nation's broader role in Iraq, amid signs of a schism between London and Washington.

Britain has been pushing for a significant UN administrative role in Iraq, hoping its presence will lend international legitimacy to any post-Saddam administration.

The United States, which has been making its own plans for post-war Iraq, says it will allow UN coordination in post-war Iraq, but will not permit the world body to control an interim government.

Pleuger he said the draft resolution did not mention post-war reconstruction in Iraq.

"That has not yet been discussed but it is certainly a subject that will come up later in the Security Council," he said.


PHOTO CAPTION

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (L) meets UN Secretary General Koffi Annan(AFP/POOL/Jeff Christensen)