Bush preparing to outline a political role for the UN in Iraq

George Bush announced last night that America, Britain and Spain were ready to put forward a resolution that would bring a swift lifting of sanctions against Iraq.

"The US, Great Britain and Spain will soon introduce a new resolution to lift sanctions," Mr Bush confirmed after a White House meeting with the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar.

"The regime the sanctions were directed against no longer rules Iraq," said Mr Bush, who hours earlier had lifted some US sanctions against Baghdad, to ease humanitarian relief. "No country can in good conscience support using sanctions to hold back the hopes of the Iraqi people."

And the President claimed that hostility to the US had lessened in the Security Council. "Our diplomats at the UN say the atmosphere that existed before the war has changed."

Before it is tabled, the text of the resolution will be delivered to the capitals of the five permanent members of the Security Council by American and British envoys.Sources said the draft would ask for a rapid lifting of sanctions against Iraq.

But to win French and Russian support, it will have to contain a number of concessions ensuring a clear, if carefully circumscribed, political and humanitarian role for the UN.

At the top of the list will be an invitation to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, to appoint a co-ordinator to work with Allied officials in Iraq on forging an interim Iraqi administration. It would be a high-level appointment, senior to the existing UN adviser on Iraq, but without the powers granted to UN "special representatives" in Afghanistan and Angola.

The draft resolution has come together after many days of tense debate in Washington and London. Britain has sought to give the UN enough of a role to satisfy France, Russia and other European governments.

The text will also encourage UN member states to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq. This is designed to give governments a degree of implicit UN backing if they wish to send peace-keeping troops.

Poland, meanwhile, has been lobbying Washington to give the green light to include German and Danish troops in any Polish-led peace-keeping force. Germany, though, has said it has no intention of sending any forces to Iraq.

Whether the text will be sufficient to ease the recent French and Russian antagonism cannot yet be assessed. Dominiquede Villepin, France's Foreign Minister, again questioned America's efforts to establishan interim Iraqi authority in Baghdad. "The coalition is putting in place a provisional solution," he said. "A process that cannot be questioned must swiftly follow, one which must involve the whole international community, that is to say the United Nations."