The standoff over weapons inspections in Iraq calmed down at the United Nations Tuesday after the flare-up concerning documents on Iraq’s chemical weaponry.

The U.N. Security Council downplayed the significance of the documents dispute – even as it voted to extend an exemption from U.N. sanctions that would allow Baghdad to sell 5.2 billion dollars of oil over the next six months to buy food and medicine.

The dispute arose last week when U.N. weapons inspectors demanded that Iraq release several documents about the use of chemical munitions during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But now Iraqi, U.N. and U.S. diplomats have dismissed talk that it could spark new hostilities despite Iraq’s claim that most of the relevant documents have been destroyed or never existed.

“I think it is up to Iraq to cooperate fully,” U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said. Only if it fails to cooperate with the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which must verify that Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction, will Iraq be faded with the threat of U.S. military attack, he added.

Ambassador Saeed Hassan, who has been named Iraq’s next U.N. permanent representative, told IPS that he doubted that the crisis would boil over into a military standoff, as an earlier dispute with UNSCOM had done before Iraq allowed weapons inspections to resume on Nov. 14.

“It is not a major problem,” Hassan argued. “Even prior to Aug. 4 (the day before Iraq halted cooperation with UNSCOM), you will notice that the issue of documents was never regarded as a major issue by UNSCOM. Access to sites, or presidential sites – those were its concerns.”

Iraq is blaming UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler for the latest dispute. He complained last week in a letter to the 15- nation Security Council that “Iraq has an obligation under the resolutions of the Council to make available to the Commission any document which…is relevant to its mandate.”

“It seems that the underlying reason for the overemphasis placed by the Executive Chairman on this issue is the desire to have an endless game to show Iraq at fault,” countered Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in a letter delivered to the Council.

Despite its objections to Butler and its claim that UNSCOM does not intend to declare Baghdad in compliance with U.N. disarmament demands, Iraq nevertheless has offered to show the documents it has declared to be in its possession to the weapons inspectors.

One diary detailing the use of chemical ordinance will be shown to UNSCOM, but only in the presence of a special U.N. envoy, Prakash Shah, who has mediated previous standoffs between the inspectors and Iraq.

Iraq’s posture, U.N. diplomats said, seems cooperative enough to avoid any conflict – including air strikes from U.S. troops still massed in and around the Persian Gulf – for now. But British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock dismissed the recent flurry of words over the documents as “rather disappointing and discouraging,” and many diplomats believe the current calm is only temporary.

At the very least, this week’s events have probably delayed a long-promised “comprehensive review” of U.N.-Iraq relations by the Security Council, which Iraq’s allies hope can lead to a phasing out of the eight-year-old sanctions. Even Iraqi officials have pointed to the friction with UNSCOM as a sign that the comprehensive review might be delayed.

“We believe that they need to provide the documents to allow inspection before this comprehensive review can go forward,” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.

Trust between the two sides, never good, plummeted sharply as U.S. warships massed in the Persian Gulf this month and U.S. planes were within hours of attacking Iraqi sites before an agreement was reached on resuming UNSCOM inspections.

Since then, Iraqi officials have resented rhetoric from the U.S. and British governments about the need to replace Saddam Hussein’s regime with a democratic government. Aziz angrily charged that such comments violated Iraq’s sovereignty.

Nevertheless, aid by the two governments to Iraq’s opposition has grown more public, with 16 Iraqi opposition groups meeting in London Monday to form a common front against Hussein. That was the same day that Iraq reported a failed assassination attempt against Izzat Ibrahim, deputy head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council.

Ibrahim was reported to have been slightly wounded in a grenade attack in the city of Karbala, a holy site for Shi’a Muslims.

Baghdad’s anger at the Western governments’ more open efforts to oust Hussein has been matched by wariness in the United States that Iraq wants Butler – whom Washington trusts – replaced as UNSCOM chief.

Aziz’s Monday letter, for example, faulted Butler’s comments and “impossible” demands and even implied that the U.N. official, who is Australian, may give Britain and the United States an excuse to attack Iraq.

“Certainly the Executive Chairman could not have been unaware of the declared policy of two permanent (Council) members to launch a military attack on Iraq instantly once they deem Iraq as not cooperating with UNSCOM,” Aziz wrote, accusing Butler of “acting in fact in a non-professional manner.”

Yet the blunt, and occasionally abrasive, tactics of Butler have helped Iraq to portray itself as a victim – a welcome change for Iraq from recent months in which its lack of cooperation with UNSCOM gave the United States the diplomatic edge.

As the military tension dissipated, however, support for Iraq’s case for lifting U.N. sanctions was expected to again gather steam.

“The best agent of Saddam Hussein is Richard Butler,” joked one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.