TEHRAN, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran's representative to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Mohammad Ali Khatibi said here on Sunday that Iran welcomed OPEC emergency meeting in February, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

    "Iran welcomes an OPEC emergency meeting in February ahead of the next planned meeting in March," Fars quoted Khatibi as saying.

    "If we could have a meeting in February, we could evaluate OPEC's January performance," Khatibi said.

    As a part of OPEC's new plan, Iran will cut its crude oil output by 545,000 barrels a day in average in January.

    The previous OPEC President Chakib Khelil who was replaced by Angola's Oil Minister Botelho de Vasconcelos, said earlier that OPEC might hold an urgent meeting in Kuwait in February.

    OPEC which accounts for about 40 percent of global supply in December agreed on a deepest-ever net cut of 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of Jan. 1, bringing the total output cut in 2008 to 4.2 million bpd, in another attempt to bolster sagging oil prices under the global economic slowdown.

    After only one-week slight rebound, the weekly average prices of the OPEC again dived below 40 U.S. dollars a barrel to 34.92 U.S. dollars last week.

    OPEC's decision on Dec. 17 of a daily crude oil output cut of 2.2 million barrels failed to arrest oil slide. OPEC officials believed that a bigger output cut is necessary.