BAGHDAD. July 6 : Iraq's foreign ministry demanded on Tuesday that the United Nations recall a New Zealand demining expert within 72 hours, accusing him of tiying to destroy Iraq’s crops by planting locust eggs, reports AFP.

It is tne first such incident since UN arms inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 on the eve of US and British air strikes.

The ministry called in the UN humanitarian affairs coordinator Hans von Sponek and gave him "a memorandum asking for the departure of the New Zealand national from Iraq within 72 hours," the official INA news agency said.

The ministry accused the New Zealander of putting "locust eggs, a fatal insect for harvests. in the Khanaqin region" close to the Iraq-Iran border northeast of Baghdad.

An official from the United Nations office in Baghdad confirmed the Iraqi demand, saying the memorandum had been handed over on Tuesday morning.

The foreign ministry said the New Zealander, who supervises the demining programme in the northeastern province of Sulimaniya. had "in April buried cases containing locust eggs, fatal to cultivation."

"Residents in the region unearthed the cases and saw they contained locust eggs. This criminal and immoral act is aimed at sabotaging the Iraqi economy.