Poland said on Tuesday it would need a UN Security Council mandate to take part in the proposed peacekeeping mission which the United States is trying to organize in Iraq

Diplomats said such a UN resolution was still some way off because of continuing disagreements in the Security Council over Iraqi oil sales and the status of an interim Iraqi authority to be installed under U.S. military occupation. Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz put the Polish position to reporters after talks at the State Department with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Poland has proposed to the United States that its soldiers team up with German and Danish troops to keep the peace in one region of postwar Iraq, Polish officials said on Tuesday. Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski, in Washington for talks on setting up an Iraq "stabilization force," said such a unit could be based on a joint Polish-German-Danish NATO corps now stationed in northwestern Poland. Cimoszewicz discussed the proposal with Powell and told Reuters that Poland wanted as many European countries as possible to take part in the stabilization force.