US hints of agreement with allies on pipeline

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Tuesday he expected an announcement soon that the United States and its European allies had reached agreement about the lifting of US sanctions against the Soviet natural gas pipeline.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has invited a United Nations mission to look at labor conditions on the pipeline project, a spokesman from the International Labor Organization said. Pressure on the Soviet Union has been building up since a West German human rights group charged in June that an estimated 100,000 workers had been forced to work on the pipeline.