The United States hopes the U.N. Security Council will lift restrictions on the import of nuclear technology to Iraq, even though Baghdad has not ratified a U.N. agreement on tough atomic inspections, according to a report from Reuters.
At a meeting on Wednesday to be chaired by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the 15-nation Security Council is expected to remove Iraq's Chapter VII status, adopt resolutions ending the controversial U.N. oil-for-food program, and extend for six months immunities protecting Iraq from claims related to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Those immunities will expire at the end of June 2011, a senior U.S. official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Baghdad will keep paying 5 percent of its oil revenues as war reparations, most of it to Kuwait, despite Iraq's calls for a renegotiation of those payments so it can use more of its oil money for needed development projects, Western diplomats said.
Iraq still owes Kuwait nearly $22 billion in reparations.
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