UNITED NATIONS: With the United Nations (UN) describing Iraq as a crippled society, three Iraqi delegates present their case to the UN Security Council yesterday during a major debate on post-war reconstruction.

No decision will be made about whether the Iraqis represent an interim government or will occupy Iraq's UN seat.

But the three, part of a new 25-member US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, may try to declare themselves the new government of Iraq but get little response, diplomats said.

Delegation leader is Adnan Pachachi, the 80-year old former foreign minister who served before Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power in 1968, and Akila al-Hashimi, a mid-level diplomat under Saddam Hussein who worked on UN issues at the foreign ministry. She is one of three women on the Iraqi body.

Yesterday, a US soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush along a dangerous road north of Baghdad in the "Sunni Triangle," the US military reported.

Far to the north, a big gun battle broke out when US soldiers surrounded a house in Mosul belonging to a cousin of Saddam Hussein, according to an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the scene.

The soldier's death brought to 153 the number of US troops killed in action since the March 20 start of war - six more than during the 1991 Gulf War.

In Paris, a leading press watchdog called yesterday for US and British authorities to ease media restrictions in Iraq quickly and draw up liberal media laws to replace the straitjacket imposed by Saddam Hussein.

The country's new freedoms could be at risk if resistance to US and British forces grew, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders warned in a report entitled "The Iraqi media three months after the war: A new but fragile freedom."

Saddam's fall in April has spawned a boisterous new media, including at least 85 newspapers and magazines, dozens of Internet cafes as well as radio stations and satellite television channels, the group said.

"Reporters Without Borders calls for work to begin very soon on drafting liberal and democratic media regulations and laws to fill the present void," the report said.

Agencies via Xinhua

(China Daily 07/23/2003 page1)