Iraq Says Ready to Receive US Delegation on Missing Pilot

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 25, 2002

Iraq Says Ready to Receive US Delegation on Missing Pilot

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Iraq is ready to receive a U.S. delegation to discuss the fate of a U.S. pilot whose aircraft was shot down over Iraqi territory during the 1991 Gulf War, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

"The Iraqi authorities concerned are ready to receive a U.S. delegation to discuss the issue," the spokesman said in a statement.

The U.S. delegation will be accompanied by a media delegation, the spokesman said, adding that the talks between the two sides will be under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Michael Scott Speicher, an F-18 Hornet pilot, was shot down over Iraq on February 17, 1991, and Iraq has claimed that the U.S. pilot was already dead.

However, the U.S. Navy last January changed the status of the pilot from "killed in action" to "missing in action" and former U. S. President Bill Clinton maintained that he believed Speicher might still be alive.

Iraq argues that it has cooperated with a U.S. team that carried out a research in the west of the country in 1995 and found the wreckage of the downed plane, but "the U.S. team left without reaching a conclusion concerning the body of the pilot."

Iraq has accused the United States of trying to provoke a new crisis with Baghdad.

U.S. President George W. Bush has branded Iraq as part of an " axis of evil" and strongly warned that Iraq may become the next target of the U.S.-led war on terror.

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