In an interview with AFP at UN headquarters, Aldouri also said he planned to leave New York later in the day for the Middle East, but he did not specify exactly where he was heading.

"I am leaving for the Middle East. It's scheduled for today, but that could change," the ambassador said, speaking in French.

"I am still the legal representative of Iraq," added Aldouri, who has represented Iraq at the UN since February 2001. "I have not had news and I am waiting."

"Now, we are under occupation. There will be a change of regime in Iraq, and someone else will be appointed. It's normal. That's the way it goes," he said.

Lawyers seeking to link Iraq to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing said Friday they wanted Aldouri held in contempt of court in case he skips the country.

"Aldouri was an agent of a terror state and remains an enemy of our country," said Larry Klayman, chairman of the organisation Judicial Watch which is pursuing a lawsuit against the Iraqi government on behalf of the survivors and victims of the Oklahoma bombing.

Judicial Watch lawyers had subpoenaed the ambassador in March. After he failed to appear for a deposition earlier this week, the lawyers sought an order from a Manhattan District Court to hold Aldouri in contempt before he could flee the country.

A contempt hearing on Wednesday was postponed for a week at the request of the US Justice Department which said it needed time to consider the issue of the ambassador's immunity.

The new hearing was set for April 16.

Aldouri said of the case "that is meaningless. It is somebody who wants to make a gesture," noting that at the time of that attack he was an international law professor at the University of Baghdad, and that no such link has ever been suggested.

The attack in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 left 168 dead including 19 children. Timothy McVeigh, a US military veteran, was convicted and executed by lethal injection June 11, 2001.

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