Iraq's Foreign Minister Mr Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf headed to New York today to attend UN talks on decade-old Gulf War sanctions despite Friday's US-British air strikes near Baghdad.
The high-level UN session with Secretary General Mr Kofi Annan is scheduled for next Monday and Tuesday.
Mr Sahaf said he would attend the talks despite the bombing by US and British warplanes of sites near Baghdad. Iraq said the attack killed two civilians and wounded more than 20.
Mr Annan said yesterday the United States had assured him the air attacks were not an escalation.
Earlier Mr Sahaf had sent a letter to Mr Annan demandingthe UN condemn the bombing as an act of aggression and hold the US and Britain fully liable for all damages.
The UN Security Council - of which Ireland is a member -discussed the letter yesterday but took no action because none was required, according to Mr Said Ben Mustapha of Tunisia, whose country now holds the council's rotating presidency.
Mr Sahaf said Baghdad would make proposals aimed at ending an impasse between Iraq and the UN over the inspection of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But he said these proposals, and the talks with Mr Annan, were not based on the Security Council's resolution 1284, which calls for an easing of the sanctions regime if Baghdad allows UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and co-operates with them.
Baghdad has rejected the resolution, which was adopted by the council in December 1999. The inspectors have been barred from Iraq since they left on the eve of a wave of US and British bombings in December 1998.