Mr Hain, a former Welsh Secretary, said the minister's "curious statement" wasatvariance with constructive meetings he had had with other ministers, including David Cameron.
However, a spokesman for Mr Annan warned that the procedure proposed by the Iraqis was"at variance" with the methods agreed by the UN Security Council.
The point was to equalize the variance of the numbers among different eras by looking at how the all-time greats statistically stacked up to their peers during the time in which they played.