Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - The G8 Foreign Ministers, meeting in Rome on 18 and 19 July to prepare the Summit which opened in Genoa on Friday, called on the United Nations and the international community to adopt a "new approach" towards Iraq. On the other hand, they urged Baghdad to allow United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to control whether Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed. The ministers, however, did not specify what this new approach would consist of. However, according to an official American source cited by the Reuters Agency, the Japanese and the West refer to the recent American-British plan aimed at reorganising sanctions imposed on Baghdad over the past eleven years, with relaxation of the sanctions on Iraqi
purchases to civilian ends and strengthened controls on oil and military goods. Russia is opposed to the plan but other members of the United Nations Security Council are in favour. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin felt that the sanctions against Iraq were counter-productive. He expressed doubt about the effectiveness of readjusting sanctions as stipulated in the American-British plan.