The Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Al Douri, said on Friday that Baghdad would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) extending the existing UN oil-for-food program, according to CNN.
He said, however, that it was unlikely the deal would be signed before Monday.
Iraq stopped exporting oil under the scheme, designed so that Baghdad could use some export earnings to buy supplies for its civilians, when moves were made to revise the sanctions.
The ambassador said "everything will be normalized" and Iraq would restore its oil exports to about two million barrels a day.
"Discussions are ongoing to resolve some technical issues," a UN spokesperson told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Iraq halted exports on June 4 to protest against a US-backed British proposal to overhaul economic sanctions imposed on the Iraqi nation after in invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The oil-for-food program has lost $1.3 billion in the four weeks Iraq stopped its oil sales, according to UN estimates cited by CNN.
Facing a veto by Russia, Britain and the US dropped the sanctions revision proposal last Tuesday, and instead supported an extension of the oil-for-food program.
The revised sanctions would have allowed more civilian goods into Iraq, while introducing measures to tighten the control of military supplies.
Iraq had threatened to pull out of the oil-for-food program if the resolution was adopted.
Oil-for-food, created in 1996 as an exemption to sanctions against Iraq, allows Iraq to export unlimited amounts of oil to buy food, medicine and other essentials, while also paying war reparations.
Within the same context, Iraq topped the agenda of a phone conversation between US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Friday.
The leaders "discussed a wide variety of issues and talked about how they could work together on strategic stability, improved economic relations and a variety of regional issues," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters – Albawaba.com
