Iraqi sanction vote expected Thursday
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Statues of Iraqi military leaders wait for destruction at a government-owned art studio in Baghdad.
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CNN's Karl Penhaul on a Shiite Baghdad rally calling for the United States to stay out of postwar politics.
CNN's Michael Okwu on the son of a former Iraqi diplomat accused by U.S. authorities of spying.
CNN's Karl Penhaul on concerns about radiation sickness near a research facility.
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SPECIAL REPORT
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UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- A vote on lifting U.N. sanctions against Iraq is likely to go before the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, diplomats said Tuesday.
Diplomats at the U.N. Security Council discussed the resolution on Iraq, put forward by the United States, UK and Spain, for four hours Tuesday
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, said his delegation still had questions about the resolution, and wanted the draft to be clearer on issues like the Security Council's role in overseeing Iraq's reconstruction and the criteria for phasing out measures like the oil-for-food program.
Lavrov said the United States and its co-sponsors promised to address those issues Wednesday. (Full story)
Saddam brother-in-law caught
Coalition forces conducting recent police patrols in Iraq have arrested nearly 500 people, including a brother-in-law of Saddam Hussein's, U.S. Central Command said Monday.
Luay Khayrallah, brother of the wife of the deposed Iraqi leader, was also a companion of Saddam's eldest son, Uday, as well as a "representative of the former regime's intelligence/security apparatus," according to a Central Command statement.
Khayrallah, No. 152 on the coalition's most-wanted list, was captured Friday, the statement said. Officials did not say where he was caught.
In Baghdad, troops arrested 311 people Sunday and Monday for crimes, including looting, curfew violations, weapons violations, theft and carjacking, the statement said.
The patrols are part of an effort to control rampant crime that has emerged as one of the threats to stability in post-war Iraq.
Other developments
• Soldiers with the Army's V Corps cleared 360 tons of garbage from one of Baghdad's poorest Shiite neighborhoods and put up basketball nets and soccer goals, Central Command said. Army dentists also treated about two dozen patients. The outreach came Monday as a Shiite-led demonstration drew at least 10,000 people, many of them protesting the presence of American troops. In addition, Central Command said that 96 of 100 fuel stations in Baghdad were open -- up from 56 last week -- and that all major hospitals, water distribution facilities and sewer treatment plants were receiving 100 percent of their electrical needs.
• Five U.S. Marines were killed Monday when a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed in a waterway near the central Iraqi city of Karbala, Pentagon officials said. Four Marines were onboard the helicopter, and the fifth died during the rescue attempt. (Full story)
• The top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq Sunday denied reports that the United States has decided to postpone the formation of an interim Iraqi authority. Paul Bremer told reporters the coalition is determined to move forward "as quickly as we can." Iraqi opposition leaders had expected an interim government would emerge from a national conference set for the end of May. But after a Friday meeting among Bremer, British envoy John Sawers and Iraqi opposition leaders, it was widely reported that the schedule had been pushed back to provide time for a more complete purge of Baath Party officials from key positions.
