COMBINED REPORTS


PARIS -- France on Monday rejected U.S. and British criticism of its decision to establish a diplomatic toehold in Baghdad nearly four years after the Gulf War, saying both already had low-level links with Iraq.


Washington and London expressed concern that the decision, announced Friday, to open an interests section in the Romanian Embassy in Baghdad, might encourage Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to flout peace terms imposed after the 1991 Gulf War ejected Iraqi troops from Kuwait.


"No other member state has reestablished in Baghdad in this way," a British Foreign Office spokesman said. "We remain very suspicious of the Iraqi regime's intentions in the wake of last October" when units of the Iraqi Republican Guard moved toward the Kuwaiti border. "It is not the moment to relax pressure on Iraq to comply fully with UN requirements."


That view was echoed in the United States.


"We do not believe that this is a timely action," said State Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly. "Iraq continues to defy the international community and to violate many UN Security Council resolutions."


French Foreign Ministry spokesman Richard Duque, however, rejected the criticism.


"We have been very surprised by the British and American comments at the announcement of the opening of a French interests section in Baghdad," he told reporters.


"An Iraqi interests section has been open in London since 1991 while the Iraqi interests section opened in Paris only in September 1993," he said.


"The American reaction is even more astonishing as the United States itself has had in Baghdad since 1991 a set-up operating in the buildings of the U.S. Embassy under the Polish flag," he said.


"The French interests section will be different only by the presence of a French diplomat with a very small staff."


Paris made the announcement on its new diplomatic presence during a visit by a senior Iraqi leader, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, the first top Iraqi official to visit the country since the Gulf War. French Foreign Minister Alain Jupp? held a 90-minute breakfast meeting with Aziz to discuss prospects for easing sanctions now that Iraq has recognized Kuwait's borders and says it has complied with UN resolutions that require it to destroy all weapons of mass destruction.


The UN Security Council is scheduled Jan. 17 to determine whether Baghdad has displayed sufficient good faith to warrant lifting an embargo on the sale of its oil. Of the Security Council's five permanent members, France, Russia and China favor easing sanctions against Iraq, while the United States and Britain remain fiercely opposed.


Duque noted that Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah was satisfied that the decision to open the interests section would not affect French-Kuwaiti relations and did not violate UN resolutions.


"The Kuwaiti minister declared, on the contrary, that this initiative could help to sort out certain points," Duque added, without elaborating. Iraq was long a prime client for French arms and capital goods and owes Paris about $5 billion.