The State Department said on Thursday it was possible no one would represent Iraq at meetings of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries until the Iraqis have found a way to select a representative. "Until the Iraqis have the ability to decide their representation, maybe they won't be there," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said when asked who would attend an OPEC meeting in Vienna on April 24 on Iraq's behalf.

The question of who, if anyone, may represent Iraq presents the U.S. government with an awkward diplomatic problem.

On the one hand, the United States has de facto control of the country following the U.S.-led war and on the other it is reluctant to be seen as dictating Iraqi policy, particularly on the most sensitive issue of control of Iraqi oil resources.

U.S. officials said it was Washington's view that decisions on Iraq's OPEC representation should ultimately be left to the Iraqis and that with no Iraqi government in place it was possible no one would attend such meetings.

"Whether Iraq attends next week's meeting is not regarded as a major priority right now," said one U.S. official who asked not to be named.

An OPEC source on Wednesday said OPEC had invited Saddam Hussein's oil minister Amir Muhammed Rasheed, featured on Washington's most-wanted list, to next week's cartel meeting.

Rasheed, last seen by journalists at the Doura oil refinery on March 25 surrounded by burning pits of oil as bombs fell on nearby Baghdad, became oil minister in 1995.

He was previously in charge of Iraq's military industrialization and appears as the "six of spades" in a deck of cards given out by the U.S. military listing Washington's 55 most wanted Iraqis.

A U.S. official suggested that it was inconceivable that Rasheed might represent Iraq at the meeting, but he said who, if anyone, would do so was still under consideration.

"The former regime is over and does not represent the Iraqi people," said the official.

"I don't know if OPEC really expects this gentleman to show up or not," said Boucher, without saying whether the United States could accept Rasheed's attending the meeting.

Iraq, which has the second-biggest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, is a founding member of OPEC

PHOTO CAPTION

OPEC's Vienna headquarters. The oil cartel has announced it will hold its next ministerial meeting in Vienna. (AFP/File/Barbara Gindl)