Annan to lead U.N delegation to meeting with Iraq

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan will head the United Nations delegation at the opening and closing sessions framing two days of high-level talks with a delegation from Baghdad, set to begin on Monday at UN Headquarters in New York.

According to a UN spokesman, Annan may also meet privately with the head of the Iraqi delegation, Foreign Minister Mohamed Said al-Sahaf.

The first session of the talks, aims to break the current impasse. The Secretary-General will chair the UN delegation, which will also include Legal Counsel Hans Corell; Jayantha Dhanapala, the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs; Benon Sevan, the Executive Director of the Office of the Iraq Programme; Danilo Turk, the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs; Shashi Tharoor, the Acting head of the Department for Public Information; Senior Officer Vladimir Grachev; and Iqbal Riza, the Chief of Staff.