BAGHDAD - UN aid coordinator Hans von Sponeck has quit his post, following the example of his predecessor who was driven out by US charges of turning soft on sanctions-hit Iraq, a UN official said Monday.

Von Sponeck, who has held the job since September 1998 and stayed on in Baghdad during a US and British air war that December, is to stand down on March 31.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, meanwhile, said from Singapore that he had accepted the resignation "with regret, and I wish him all the best in every success in his future."

In Baghdad, UN spokesman George Somerwill said the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq outlined his reasons in the letter to Annan, but declined to elaborate.

Von Sponeck, a German diplomat, will be in New York from February 27 to meet Annan. The coordinator will come back to Baghdad after a week and later "plans to return to Europe," Somerwill said.

Annan said the United Nations would "continue to implement the humanitarian programme and we will do our best to make it as effective as possible in order to alleviate the sufferings of the Iraqi people."

Von Sponeck has since last year come under fire from Washington and London for criticising the sanctions which the United Nations imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

He replaced another critic of the sanctions regime, Dennis Halliday of Ireland, who now campaigns for it to be lifted.

The United Nations supervises a three-year-old "oil-for-food" programme which allows Baghdad to export crude in return for imports of food, medicine and other essential goods.

Von Sponeck's contract was renewed last November, despite US and British opposition.

In what proved to be the last straw for Washington, von Sponeck warned last week in a CNN television interview that the UN programme was failing to meet even the "minimum requirements" of Iraq's 22 million population.

"As a UN official, I should not be expected to be silent to that which I recognise as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended," he said.

"How long should the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?" he asked.

In contrast to the US criticism, Iraq's official newspapers on Friday paid a glowing tribute to von Sponeck, drawing a distinction from past UN weapons inspection chiefs.

"If von Sponeck had acted as a spy, like (Richard) Butler and (Rolf) Ekeus, he would not have attracted the wrath of the Americans," said the ruling Baath party's daily, Ath-Thawra.

It said von Sponeck had "denounced, from his first-hand knowledge the deterioration of the sanitary and nutritional situation in Iraq."

The nine-year-old embargo has cost more than 1.26 million lives, including some 500,000 children under five, mostly due to malnutrition and the collapse of the health care sector under sanctions, according to Iraqi authorities.

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1284 in December offering a suspension of sanctions in return for Iraqi cooperation with a new arms control panel.

Baghdad has condemned the resolution but not rejected it outright.

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Copyright © 2000 AFP