Sv ria’s parliament has approved the establishment of a free trade zone with Iraq and called for greater economic cooperation with Baghdad after two decades ol animosity, officials said Thursday.

They said the deal, signed initially in Damascus on January 31 by Iraqi Vice-President Talia Yassin Ramadan and Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa Mero, was unanimously approved by the 250-member People s As semblv on Wednesday evening.

Analysts described the accord as the latest phase in the rapprochement between the neighbours, which has included resumption of diplomatic ties and the reopening of land and air transportation links.

lies between Iraq and Syria.

ruled by rival factions of tin Arab Baath Socialist Party, were t ut oil lor the first time after the outbieak ol the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, in which Damascus sided with le-hran.

Syria joined a US-led multinational alliance which drove Iraqi occupation troops out of Kuwait in 1991. Bui it agreed to resume economic and commercial cooperation with Baghdad in 1997, under the oil-for-food programme signed between Iraq and the United Nations (hat allows Iraq to sell some oil for humanitarian purposes while sanctions are in place.

Approval of the tree-trade agreement followed a visit to Damascus on Monday by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which he called for jircsei vadnn ol the UN economic sanctions imposed

on Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Powell said after talks with President Bashar al-Assad that Syria had agreed to put under UN inspection an oil pipeline earning Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean and Iraqi oil supplies to Syria, estimated at 100,000 barrels per day.

/A Syrian official told Reuters on I hursday that while respecting UN resolutions, Syria is calling for an end to the economic sanctions imposed on Baghdad.

"There is no justification for the continuation of these sanctions after all these years, because they are banning the Iraqi peo-ple," the official said.

fhe pipeline, which used to carry oil from the Iraqi Kirkuk oil Helds to the Syrian Mediterranean purl of B.inyas. was reopened kite last year after 18 years.